DABHAR and the ISNESS of GOD

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Tomorrow, I will get into my car to begin the nearly three-and-a-half-thousand kilometre journey to Vancouver.  When people ask me why I’m driving so far instead of flying, I tell them it is because my sabbatical affords me the luxury of taking my time. But I suspect the real reason has something to do my love of this immense land in which I have the pleasure of living. From behind the wheel, I will have the freedom to explore just a small part of Canada and I can hardly wait to get beyond the familiar routes of my day-to-day life and out on to the open road, knowing all the while that in the far off distance, beyond the rocks and trees of Ontario, the open expanse of the prairies lie the mountains.  I will linger in the mountains before making my way to the Vancouver School of Theology, on the grounds of my alma mater the University of British Columbia, where I will spend six glorious weeks reading and reflecting upon the many emerging connections that are happening in progressive christian theology. So, filled as I am, with anticipation of all that tomorrow promises, I am also filled with memories of other trips into the splendour of creation.

When I was a student in the Religious Studies department at the University of British Columbia, I decided that if I was ever going to be able to understand religious practices that I would need to do more than simply study them from an academic perspective.  Longing to understand more about Buddhism I decided to learn how to meditate. I went to a Buddhist retreat centre to try to learn the fine art of meditation.  While I learned a great deal in the process of learning to meditate, I found the experience of meditation to be very frustrating.  I’m drawn to ideas, and reading, and studying.  I love roaming around in the words that have been strung together by scholars, or historians or theologians, or philosophers or psychologists or even novelists. I thrive on the written word and so the scarcity of words that the discipline of meditation demands can often frustrate me.

I remember talking to a good friend of mine about the trouble I was having learning to meditate. Bryan had travelled all over the Far East and was an avid practitioner of transcendental meditation. He sympathized with my dilemma and suggested that perhaps my particular spiritual quest would need to be one that entailed letting go of words so that I could move beyond words.

I remember being dumbfounded by the idea of ever being able to let go of words. But Bryan insisted that unless I moved beyond words, I’d remain frustrated by my attempts to learn any form of meditation. I confessed that I had absolutely no idea where to begin. Bryan said that my basic problem was wrapped up in the weakness of my right mind. Before I could take offense, Bryan went on to explain that I was primarily a left-brain kind of gal. Bryan insisted that I needed to learn to develop the right hemisphere of my brain.

Even though I was familiar with the theories about right brain verses left brain, I had absolutely no idea about how to go about changing what I thought was the unchangeable reality that my left brain which is the area responsible for verbal and cognitive skills is the hemisphere that I tend to rely on rather than the right brain wherein lies the artistic, playful side of my nature.

I like words. I like the way words sound. I like the way the way words look. I like the meanings of words. I love the history of words. I love putting words together.    I’m called to a profession that is all about words. So, asking me to move beyond words is like asking me to give up my lifeblood. But Bryan was determined to move me beyond words and made me promise that I’d meet him at his workplace the very next day.

Bryan is a pilot; a helicopter pilot. Bryan also knows that I’m afraid of heights and although I’ve conquered my fear of flying, I’m partial to fix-wing aircraft. Helicopters make me more than nervous; helicopters terrify me. Most of my fear of helicopters is Bryan’s fault. While Bryan was studying to fly helicopters he would share with me all of his newfound knowledge about helicopters. One thing stood out: helicopters are unreliable. The best mechanic can safety check a helicopter and certify that it is perfectly safe to take off and still the helicopter can malfunction and cause the pilot to have to land immediately.  So, I wasn’t too crazy about meeting Bryan at work. But who am I to argue with a guy who is determined to develop my left brain.

That’s how I found myself hovering over the mountains of North Vancouver in a small helicopter that for some reason had no doors. I was strapped in and Bryan assured me that there was no way that I could fall out but there was something about all that fresh air that seemed a little too close for comfort. So I held on for dear life as Bryan headed North towards Garibaldi Mountain. As Garibaldi slipped out of followed by Blackcomb and Whistler the sheer beauty of all that lay before me filled me with such awe that my mind struggled to comprehend the splendor my eyes beheld. This of course was my left-brain on overdrive struggling to find words to describe the experience of my senses. It wasn’t until I heard Bryan’s voice through the crackly headset that I realized that rather than moving beyond words, my mind was flooded with words.

I asked Bryan where we were going and he pointed to a place on the northern horizon and told me that we were going to put down on the side of a mountain in a place that he knew that I would love. As we’d long since passed the boundaries of my ability to recognize the mountains by their shape, I turned to the map of the Bastion Range but could not read our location. Bryan motioned to a point in the distance and indicated that it would be there that he would land.

As we hovered over the spot, I wondered how he’d manage to land, when through the headset Bryan explained. It was too dangerous to actually land.  Bryan would hover inches from the ground and if I was willing to go where few humans had ever been, I would step out of the chopper and huddle down on the ground as Bryan swooped back up into the air out of sight so that I could be alone in a place where Bryan was sure I’d find no words but one.

I was relieved that Bryan hadn’t explained all this while we were still on terra firma because I would never have agreed to the journey. But out there the appeal of the Alpine meadow perched on a mountainside was more than I could resist.

As the ground approached, I became convinced that I was about to die, but I was much younger then and far more reckless, and in seconds, I was hugging the earth and feeling the whoosh of the chopper as Bryan climbed. I knew that he’d be back in about 5 minutes, but as the sound left, it was replaced by the roar of a silence I’d never heard before. I stood up in time to see Bryan disappear behind the summit and discovered that I was literally on top of the world.  I’ve rarely tired to put into words what happened next.  I resisted doing so for years.  I think out of some sort of belief that in trying to put it into words I’d rob it of its, its what, that’s just it, I don’t know what……Well I do know, I just don’t know how to say it.

Standing there looking out at what seemed like all of creation right there before me. Looking down at the vast valley below and up to the summit I could almost reach out and touch, blanketed by a sky that I was convinced I could walk out upon, because so much of it appeared to be below me and not above, my senses were overwhelmed.

I was alone and yet I knew I was not alone.

I’d like to say that I was conscious of a presence but that’s not really how it was.

Words don’t do it justice.

I was surrounded by it.

Not “it” really but “is”.

“Is” is about as close as I can come to describing it.

 I was in the presence of, or surrounded by, or overwhelmed by, our upheld by or embraced by or touched by or loved by ISNESS.

            GOD IS TOO SMALL A WORD TO DESCRIBE THIS ISNESS.

But there in the presence of all that IS, I had no need to describe IS, it was enough to simply be.

All words, and thoughts slipped away and it was enough to just be.

To be in the presence of BEING.

            ……….

It’s more than beyond words, but as I try to explain what I felt on that mountainside, I’m struck by the fact that our ancestors speak of this ISNESS as YAHWEH…I AM WHO AM.

The verb “to be” is the very name of the God who is the source of all BEING.

The clearest way that I can point to and say “there that’s it that’s the pathway where you will meat this ISNESS” is to point to creation itself and say there, there right there in the creation of the Creator you will discover all that you need to know this ISNESS.

Standing there in the presence of ISNESS I could feel it.

There was no stillness except in me.

I was absolutely still except for the breath breathing in me.

All around me I could feel the energy of the meadow, the movement of the mountaintops that lay below me, and the dance of the sky, and the Breath of it all caressing me, holding me, touching me, holding me, moving in me, loving me.

As I loved it all, I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks, taste them, as the spilled upon my lips.

I sobbed with delight.

As the WORD itself spoke to me through all that IS.

The Hebrew word in Genesis and in the first chapter of the Gospel of John that we translate as the “WORD of God” means so much more than our word, WORD can capture.

For us words cannot convey what the ancients spoke of when they tried to describe the creative energy that speaks into being all that is. The voice of God that says, let there be light and so it was IS more than our word WORD or words about the WORD can express or convey.

The Hebrew word that the ancients used is DABHAR and it literally means:  “word and deed”.  For the very utterance by the Creator of all that IS, is in and of itself a compelling creative energy.

THE DABHAR, then is the compelling force of creative energy that IS. So, we often describe it as the WORD, in all capitol letters.

For in the beginning was the WORD and the WORD was with GOD and the WORD was GOD. For GOD DABHAR light and it was, it was Good.  GOD DABHAR the sky and DABHAR the waters and the earth below and it was good.

God went on Dabharing and Dabharing and this compelling creative word and deed that is God called forth all that is or ever shall be and it is good.  We live and breathe and have our being in this very ISNESS that is all that IS and ever shall be. This Creation IS, and in this ISNESS we are held, and touched, and loved, and moved to be all that we are.

Can you hear the verb “to be”? Can you feel it?

When all words fall away it is the WORD that remains. The very DABHAR of our GOD who IS.

Creation is the sacred WORD of God.  ALL that IS is in GOD.

If you want to know God you can catch a glimpse of God in all that God has made. Creation is the sacred DABHAR, the WORD AND DEED of GOD.

As part of creation each of us is DABHAR, for the WORD became flesh and dwells with us.  You are God’s WORD and DEED.  God speaks in with and through creation and so God speaks in with and through you.

The great Christian mystics speak of their experiences of God by pointing to creation.  Hildegard of Bingen says, “The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity.  This Word manifests itself in every creature.”

Meister Eckhart says, “Every creature is a word of God and is a book about God.” Creation itself Eckhart describes as the primary scripture, a Bible.

Our spiritual task is to get out of its way long enough that we might be filled with it and go about our task of healing, celebrating, and co-creating. For DABHAR the WORD wishes to incarnate us.  Let the DABHAR the WORD become flesh and dwell among us.

Hear words as we begin to try to translate the New Testament in more Hebraic terms:

            In the beginning was the DABHAR the Creative Energy:

            The Creative Energy was with God

            And the Creative Energy was God.

            It was with God in the beginning.

            Through it all things came to be,

            Not one thing had its being but through it,

            All that came to be had life in it

            And that life was the light of persons,

            A light that shines in the dark,

            A light that darkness could not overpower…

            The DABHAR, the Creative Energy was the true light

            That enlightens all people;

            And it was coming into the world.

            It was in the world

            That had its being through it,

            And the world did not know it…

            But to all who did accept it

            It gave power to become children of God…

            The Creative Energy was made flesh,

            It pitched its tent among us,

            And we saw its glory,

            the glory that is its as the only Child of the Creator,

            full of grace and full of truth.

Creation itself is a sacrament.  Creation itself is the primary sacrament.

As I partook of that sacred sacrament on the mountainside, I never wanted it to end.   But as the chopper came into view, I was keenly aware of how glad I was to be able to return to the world. Bryan insisted that he’d only been gone for five minutes but in those five minutes all of eternity had come into view. As we sailed passed mountaintops, I wept for the sheer joy of weeping. Long after the hum of the choppers noise subsided in my ears I could feel the ISNESS breathing in me as Bryan and I drove through the streets of Vancouver. All around me the beauty of the world was so clear, and I knew that God really does love it because I had a sense of why.

14 billion years is the inkling we have of the age of the universe. 14 billion years of creation that we know of, coming together to create all that IS now here in this place, in you and in me.

This ISNESS, this Creation is the original blessing that is life. You don’t need to travel to a mountaintop to see it. Wandering out into creation, the DEBHAR of GOD is not just speaking, God is shouting, declaring God’s love in the splendor of the leaves whose vibrant colours positively sing out I love you! Standing in the presence of the many children of God, you can almost taste God in the sacrament of DABHAR that each person is. The ISNESS is here all around us, breathing in with and through us, for the WORD has become flesh and dwells with us.

            Let all creation sing out with joy!

I am indebted to Mathew Fox whose book “Original Blessing” provided me with words to express the inexpressible!

The Doctrine of Original Sin versus the Teachings of Jesus

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Given the choice between the doctrine of original sin and the teachings of Jesus, I’m with Jesus! 

For centuries the church’s doctrine of Original Sin, has defined human nature as inherently sinful.  We are born cursed by the first sin of Adam. Born, some would insist, of bodily sin. Somehow the doctrine of Original Sin, permeates our understanding of the very act of procreation, and in the minds of too many, tainted the very idea of sex with sin. We are born of sin, into sin, and as such must die to our sins.  So, we wash away our sins in the waters of baptism and are reborn as forgiven sinners. For years and years this has been the modus operandi of the institutional church.

This predominant doctrine of the church does not fare well when it comes to Jesus. Jesus knew nothing of Original Sin. Jesus was a good and faithful Jew. Original Sin is not Jewish. Original Sin is not in the Bible. For a good three-hundred years after the resurrection, the church had no doctrine of Original Sin. Today, Orthodox Christians have no doctrine of Original Sin. And yet the Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations have built their institutions on the Doctrine of Original Sin. I dare say that for a good many of us, our very psyche’s have been shaped by the doctrine of Original Sin. Most of us relate to God, as sinners in need of Grace. While there is no doubt that humanity is indeed sinful, I’d like to suggest that we look to the teachings of Jesus, and the ancient traditions of Christianity to recover a sense of the goodness of creation.

We are, as the stories handed down by our ancestors insist, created in the image of our Creator, and we are good. We are as Jesus insisted, loved and blessed. We are as the letter to the Ephesians declares, “God’s work of art” We are as the saints of old have known and written, “God’s delight.” We are as science proves over and over again wondrously made. 

Every day as we learn more and more about creation and our place in it, we know that the ancient nomadic tribesmen of the Middle East got a few things wrong. There was no pristine human state. No time when humans were perfect. There was no fall from grace. The story of the fall is just that, a story told by an ancient tribe to try to explain their relationship to their Creator. Yes there is much truth to be learned from the story. But we cannot learn the whole truth from this ancient tale and we must not base our image of ourselves on this story.

We are wondrously made. We have learned so much down through the centuries and if we are to continue to follow the teachings of Jesus then we “must love God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, and with our whole mind.” We cannot check our brains at the door and don the persona of those “in bondage to sin” who cannot free themselves. 

We have learned much about the cosmos over the centuries and that knowledge, despite our worst fears, does not diminish God. The more we learn about the cosmos and our place in it the more we learn of our Creator and the more we come to realize that it is good. 

We live in a post-Darwinian world. We know about evolution. We know that humans have evolved and are continuing to evolve and this miraculous reality is to be celebrated and not feared. Creation is an ongoing reality. “All of creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth.” 

But sadly for some, it’s as if the Creator is throwing a marvelous banquet, and we are so preoccupied with our misunderstandings and distractions that we are refusing to attend. It’s long past time to free ourselves from the doctrine of  original sin and embrace the sacredness of humanity.

The universe itself is full of grace. It’s time to open our arms to the embrace of the One who is, was, and ever more shall be, the One who lives and breathes in with and through us. The force that permeates the cosmos. We can hold on to our wounds or we can let them go and move on.

I’m not saying that there is no evil in the world, or that we are without error. But like Dr. Martin Luther King I believe that “the moral arch of the universe bends toward justice” and that standing on the shoulders of all those who have gone before us, creation has the potential to evolve. As part of creation we have the potential to evolve, so that each generation does a little better than the generation before. That means taking responsibility for our mistakes.  Confession is good for us. We can’t learn from our mistakes unless we confess them. We can’t heal from our wounds if we don’t know what they are. We can’t develop if we don’t take a look at our shortcomings. We can’t simply let ourselves off the hook by saying it was ever thus, “We are by nature sinful.” and then keep doing the same things over and over.

Jesus’ life, death and resurrection calls us to do the work of improving our relationships with God and with one another, and to celebrate the goodness, the beauty, the grace, and the love that permeates creation.

There’s no time to wallow in our unworthiness. The banquet of blessings is well underway! It’s long past time to celebrate the blessing that Creation is. We’ve wasted enough time wallowing in original sin. It’s time to stand up and look around us at the original blessing in which we live and breath and have our being. 

We are wondrously made! It’s time to embrace our Creator’s work; it’s time to embrace our humanity!

 Re-reading Matthew Fox’s “Original Blessing”, I am reminded that although the doctrine of original dominates so much of Christianity theology and practice, there has from the very beginning been a splendid chorus of alternative voices who have heralded our Original Blessing.  Contemporary voices are lending their voices to the chorus as we open our minds to the wonders that surround us in the cosmos.

The WORDS of GOD – Catherine Faber

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From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design, 
Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline… 
We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known, 
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone. 
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found; 
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground. 
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks. 
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks. 

There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night, 
Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light. 
Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will, 
Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still 
High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars, 
The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars. 
We may watch and study or may shudder and deny, 
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky. 

By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur, 
How the living things that are descend from things that were. 
The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies, 
These tiny, humble, wordless things — how shall they tell us lies? 
We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring. 
The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing. 
Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife, 
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote life. 

And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade 
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made, 
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand. 
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand. 
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed, 
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read. 
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled. 
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world. 

                                                                   — Catherine Faber

WISDOM: SEEKING the FACE of GOD

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Sophia the Greek word for Wisdom is also the name given to the aspect of God that was present at the moment of creation. As our knowledge continues to increase it becomes more and more difficult to grasp Wisdom who dances in and out of our bits of knowledge, refusing to be confined by the limits of our sight. 

As our knowledge of the vastness and splendour of creation increases, the smallness and narrowness of our images of the Divine begs us to open our minds to a more inclusive quest for the Face of God. Our theologies and creeds will be eclipsed by our wiliness to join in Wisdom’s sacred dance!

Astro-physicist Brian Cox offers a new creation narrative to match the wonders of the cosmos as he seeks the Face of God.

Tangible-atate the Gospel

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Tangibile-atatin the Gospel for Mamma Eternal

One of the joys of being on sabbatical is the opportunity not to preach. I have been a preacher for 13 years. Which means that almost every week I have focussed upon writing a sermon. The drive to dig deeply in order to come up with something to say on Sunday morning is a focus that I both love and hate because it is both joyful and painful. All too often, I find myself sounding like myself. The break from preaching and the need to be creative on demand has allowed me the opportunity to wander off in directions that the weekly sermon demands would never allow the time for. Discovering new forms of expression is marvellous. 

I came across James Forbes via the Living the Questions DVD adult education program and I’ve been meaning to seek him out. His way with words intrigues me. Take a look at this TED talk from 2008 in which Forbes preaches about the Charter for Compassion.  He has a way with words and his phrases break the hold! “Mamma Eternal” is a keeper! I can hardly wait to use it in my own quest to “tangible-atate the Gospel”.

Wade in the Water

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Sweet Honey in the Rock @ Koerner Hall in Toronto

The Divine Feminine – Joan Chittister

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Sister Joan Chittister is a captivating speaker. In this video, recorded at Chautauqua last summer, Sister Joan examines pictures of God and the impact these pictures have had on our lives.

While Preachers Dutifully Ponder the Doctrine of the Trinity, Our Congregations Shrink???

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This Sunday is Trinity Sunday.  In anticipation, preachers all over the world are dutifully pondering the Doctrine of the Trinity desperately searching for something to say to encourage their congregations.

Preachers will trot out tired old clichés conjuring up images of triangles, shamrocks around, or point to H20’s ability to appear as water, ice, or steam while still maintaining it’s unified essence. Or have you heard the one about the 3 blind men and the elephant in the room. That old chestnut is trotted out by many a desperate preacher struggling to put flesh on the doctrine of the trinity. But for the life of me I can’t see how 1 blind man touching the elephant’s trunk and presuming that there is a tree in the room, while a second blind man catching wind of the elephant’s ear is convinced that there is some sort of giant fan in the room, while a third man grabs hold of the tail and is sure that he has hold of a rope, helps you to conclude that just because they’re all sharing a room with an elephant you can now confess that God is indeed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever amen. But all sorts of mental gymnastics will be exercised in the vain attempt to make some sort of sense of the doctrine of the Trinity!

On Trinity Sundays, mindful of the fact that trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity usually leads to heresy: dusty theological books that have not seen the light of day since last Trinity Sunday have been poured over to ensure that the formula’s learned in seminary are repeated correctly and heresy scrupulously avoided. The imaginative among us have attempted to baffle our congregations with our theological intellect, the pragmatic among us have attempted to baffle our congregations with something akin to BS, while the desperate among us have simply tried to survive the Trinity Sunday hoping against hope that no one will notice that we haven’t a clue what we’re talking about.

Perhaps only dear old Dr. Martin Luther possessed the theological integrity sufficient to save a preacher from the perils of preaching on Trinity Sunday. So, before I launch, forth, let me remind you what the instigator of the Reformation had to say on the subject of the Trinity. Martin Luther warned that: “To deny the Trinity is to risk our salvation; to try and explain the Trinity is to risk our sanity.”

I will confess that Martin Luther had much more at stake, literally at stake, than I do, because the truth is that for centuries the punishment for heresy would have found many an ancient preacher burned at the stake. But while the death penalty for heresy has been lifted, the risk to one’s sanity remains.

Now, I will confess that when faced with a particularly difficult theological knot, I prefer to begin by quoting Jesus and not Luther, but alas Jesus remained silent on the issue of the Trinity. So, I did try to find something helpful in the words of the Apostle Paul. But alas, without some really amazing theological gymnastics that are beyond my abilities to comprehend, even the Apostle Paul remains mute on the issue of the Trinity. So keeping in mind Dr. Luther’s dire warning that to,  “To deny the Trinity is to risk our salvation; but to try and explain the Trinity is to risk our sanity.”

Let me remind you that the Trinitarian formula appears in Scripture only once, in Matthew 28, during what is called the Great Commission, when Jesus commands the disciples to go forth, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. But the doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the Bible

– The doctrine of the trinity, as we know it, was first formulated in the fourth century, by a couple of guys named Gregory and a woman called Marcrina.

– The doctrine of the Trinity was then developed over hundreds of years

– The doctrine of the Trinity was at the heart of several wars

– Thousands of Christians were killed because they came down on the loosing side of arguments over the doctrine of the Trinity

– No one has ever been able to adequately explain the Trinity

– Every explanation of the Trinity that I have ever come across includes some form of heresy

By the way, just so we’re clear, I rummaged through some of my previous sermons on the doctrine of the Trinity and I must confess that if this were the twelfth century, an angry mob would be stoking up the fires beneath my feet  because based on things I have proclaimed on various Trinity Sundays a charge of Modalism could very successfully be laid against me, as could a charge of Sabellianism. You might be interested to know, that more traditional preachers than I, will no doubt preach sermons this Sunday which will prove them guilty  of Arianism or at the very least Subordinationism. All of these heresies in a bygone age would have left us with a severe shortage of clergy in the church, as many of us would be smoldering at the stake for our crimes. Deciding who is right and who is wrong, who is in and who is out is a deadly preoccupation of humanity, a preoccupation that the church has not been able to escape.

So, with apologies to Dr. Luther, I’m going to go ahead and risk my salvation by declaring that the doctrine of the trinity is but a feeble attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible mystery of the very nature of our God.  We can echo all the creeds of Christendom with as much confidence as we can muster, and as enlightening as some of those creeds may be, they cannot begin to unravel the mystery of the creator of everything that ever was and ever shall be, nor can they fully describe the magnitude of the revelation provided in the life, death and resurrection of the one we call Christ, and when it comes to the power of the Holy Spirit, all our creeds together cannot tell the story of her wondrous beauty.

The doctrine of the trinity is just a tool to help us along the way, the trinity is not God, nor is God the trinity. The trinity is merely a way to speak of the unspeakable. And yet down through the centuries we have used the doctrine of the trinity as an idol and demanded that we worship the trinity as if it were God’s very self.

We have worried more about believing in the trinity than relating to the very One whose relationship the Trinity attempts to describe. For when it comes down to it, what we know of our God finds expression our attempts to describe God as a relational being. For what is the doctrine of the Trinity if it is not the declaration that God is Creator, Christ and Spirit, intimately connected as One; at God’s very core we find a relationship. This should be our first clue that any understanding of God must begin with relationship. Surely it is more important to experience God than to explain God. Surely it is more important to relate to God than it is to preserve a doctrine that has long since failed to describe God.

You’d think that after nearly 2000 years the Christian church would have learned to be more humble in its declarations about God. And yet, today, as we strive to learn more and more about creation, some things remain out of bounds. The church remains unwilling to revisit long established doctrines, choosing instead to insist that we simply believe, because what was good enough for grandma ought to be good enough for us. And if we should doubt the doctrine of the Trinity then all we need to do is study harder and we will eventually understand. And if we are unwilling to work at understanding the Trinity we should simply trust that folks much smarter than us have figured it out so we should simply stop questioning and simply mouth the words. Let the tired clichés and the worn out illustrations suffice, forget about our questions and simply drink the kool-aid and our doubts will somehow magically disappear. And so together we focus on believing what has been handed down to us. And for a great many people that’s good enough. All we really need to do is believe, to have faith and all will be well. But oh so many more of us have grown weary of the tired insistence on belief; you only have to think of the children missing from our churches to know that our doctrines are failing to engender relationship.

I’d like to be able to say, here just learn this and believe this and all will be well,  all we need to do is figure out more up to date methods to deliver the same old doctrines and your grown children will learn to believe, but  I too have my doubts.   You see I don’t believe that the point of a religion is to engender belief. I believe that the point of religion is much bigger than belief. For if a religion does no help you relate to God or to God’s creatures, or enhance your experience of creation, then religion is not life giving and all its doctrines are but fleeting attempts to deny death.

It is far more important to have a relationship with our God than it is to understand doctrines about God. In so far as the doctrine of the trinity helps us to relate to God then it can be said to be life-giving. When the doctrine of the trinity helps us relate to God’s creatures and to God’s creation, then it can be said to be life-giving. But reduced to a formula that we must believe the doctrine of the trinity runs the risk of inhibiting our experience of God and robbing us of a life-giving relationship with God and with the world that God loves.

I am convinced that the only way to ensure that the doctrine of the trinity remains life-giving is to free it from the confines of the past. Despite it’s fear, the church must re-examine its creeds and confessions, open up our dusty doctrines to the light of the 21st century so that those that fail to enhance our relationship to God and to one another can be given a decent Christian burial and those that nurture our relationship to God and to one another can thrive.

We need to prioritize relationship and experience over ancient creeds and doctrines, least our preoccupation with correct belief causes us to miss an encounter with our God.

Trying to understand the very nature of God, is, when you think about it actually an arrogant thing for simple creatures such as we. We cannot hope to understand the nature of God.  So perhaps the most faithful sermon on the Trinity is one that merely sniffs around the edges of the mystery, hunting for something closer to an experience rather than an understanding.  God is the elusive stranger.

Sometimes it is possible to identify God, before God gets away. But most of the time we only recognize God after God is gone, like the drifter who wants to tell you his story only you do not have time, so you hand him a dollar and walk away.  Or the woman with the tearstained face who disappears while you decide whether to ask her what is wrong; or the bewildered child whose mother scolds him for being alive and whose sorrowful eyes catch yours just as she drags him away. These are the strangers who lay claim to our hearts, although they make no claims for themselves.  In their presence we fail them.  It is only after they are gone that we know who they were.  That is why it is so easy for us to sacrifice them.  We did not know.  How could we have known?  Who expected Christ to show up looking like that?

Is it possible for us to attend to our peripheral vision, to see out of the corner of our eyes, to notice those faint sounds of birdsong in the background, to catch those elusive fragrances, that might well be God, the Holy One, coming to us in ordinary space and matter, longing for an intimate encounter?

Let us be ready to notice the Spirit of God in a burning bush, to turn aside for a moment in order to encounter the mysterious, intimate God who comes to us, so that in the power of the trinity we ourselves may be made holy!

            Heirs with Christ –  inheritors and distributers of all God’s love.

            There you see, I’m not suggesting that we toss it all away.

            Down through the centuries God has revealed so much.

            I’m simply pleading that we walk humbly with our God.

            And revel in the mystery.

In a dusty library years ago, I discovered a pearl about the Trinity, which I treasure. It came from St. Augustine, a 4th century bishop who helped to craft the doctrine of the trinity.

            Augustine’s metaphor for the Trinity is that

            God is:  Lover, Beloved, and Love itself.  

            May we learn to walk humbly with that love.

Beyond Tribalism – 21st Century Pentecost

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Ideas gleamed from Clay Nelson, John Shelby Spong,

John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg

The splendid preacher Clay Nelson of St. Matthew-in-the-city, Auckland, New Zealand, opened me up to a new way of seeing Pentecost.  Nelson tells this lovely little story written by fellow Kiwi Judy Parker, entitled simply “The Hat.”

A priest looked up from the psalms on the lectern, cast his eyes over all the hats bowed before him.   Feathered, frilled, felt hats in rows like faces.  But there was one at the end of the row that was different. What was she thinking, a head without hat.  Was like a cat without fur. Or a bird without wings. 

That won’t fly here, not in the church. The voices danced in song with the colours of the windows.  Red light played along the aisle, blue light over the white corsage of Missus  Dewsbury, green on the pages of the Bible.  Reflecting up on the face of the priest.

The priest spoke to the young lady afterwards:  “You must wear a hat and gloves in the House of God. It is not seemly otherwise.”

The lady flushed, raised her chin, and strode out.

“That’s the last we’ll see of her,” said the organist.

 Later:  The organ rang out; the priest raised his eyes to the rose window.  He didn’t see the woman in hat and gloves advancing down the aisle as though she were a bride.            The hat, enormous, such as one might wear to the races. Gloves, black lace, such as one might wear to meet a duchess.  Shoes, high-heeled, such as one might wear on a catwalk in Paris.            And nothing else.

Now some people might ask, “Is this a true story?”  And I’d have to answer that this story is absolutely true!  Now for some that answer might not be enough and they’d want to know, “Did this actually happen?”  Well, I’d like to think so.  But I doubt that it actually happened. But whether it actually happened or not, most of us know that the truth in this story lies in the power of metaphor.

Metaphor, which literally means:  beyond words. The power of metaphor is in its ability to point beyond itself to truths beyond those that are apparent.  And the metaphor in this story points us to buck-naked truths about tradition, worldly power, patriarchy, hierarchy, orthodoxy and many more truths about the very nature of the church itself and religion in general.  And it doesn’t matter whether or not this actually happened or not. What matters is what we can learn about ourselves and our life together from this story.

The heroine in this little story demands to be heard as she puts all her listeners on notice that the Spirit of God is out of the box and wearing a hat.  The story of Pentecost is just as stunning.  Even though we’ve managed to pretty much domesticate the story by literalizing it and insisting that yes indeed Pentecost really did actually happen just as it is described in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the story of Pentecost refuses to play by our rules as the power of metaphor turns the Spirit of God loose on our silly notions about history.

Truth is as elusive as it is blatantly obvious and yet we continue to try to deny the paradox of truth. Truth is as colourful as the rainbows that stretch across the sky and yet we continue to try to limit the truth to the simplicity of black and white.             All too often truth’s refusal to fit into our neat little boxes causes us to deny the obvious truth in  favour of a truth of our own creation.

The story of Pentecost is a case in point. For decades historians, New Testament Scholars, and theologians have been telling us that the story of Pentecost is not history.  Like all sorts of stories about the origins of things, the story of the church’s birthday is shrouded in myth and legend. That doesn’t make the story of the church’s beginning at Pentecost any less true, it just means that it isn’t history.

The book of the Acts of the Apostles, was written by the same author who wrote the Gospel According to Luke. We have no idea who this writer was, and the name Luke does not appear on the early manuscripts. The name Luke was applied much latter, by something called “tradition”.  In those days ‘tradition” meant “the church”.  

The Acts of the Apostles represents the voice of someone living in a community at the turn of the first century.  The writer, let’s follow tradition and just call him Luke, the writer known as Luke writes a Gospel also now known as Luke, which tells the story of the life and times of Jesus as known by his community.           Luke also writes the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which chronicles the story of the early followers of Jesus, who managed to hang together after Jesus was gone and established a movement that changed the world.

Luke writes his account of the founding of this movement out of the context of his community and addresses the needs and concerns of his community.          And in both the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts, the writer makes it clear that he is writing to a character named Theopholous, which in Greek means, Lover of God. Luke addresses his writing to a lover of God and right from the beginning he confesses that he is writing so that you may have faith.  As lovers of God we read these ancient stories so that we may have faith. We do not read them so that we can know the history of events as they actually happened.

Marcus Borg suggests that in reading the stories in the Bible we must ask ourselves two important questions:  1) Why did the writers write the stories that they wrote?  and 2)  Why did they write them the way they wrote them?

When we ask those two questions about the story of Pentecost we begin to see all sorts of truths as we strip away the layers of tradition that have held this story captive to history for far too long. Why did the writer known as Luke write  the story of Pentecost and why did he write it the way he wrote it? 

I suspect that the answer to both of those questions begins to become clear when we pay attention to the story from the Hebrew Scriptures that is often told at Pentecost. Recorded in the Book of Genesis, the story of the Tower of Babel would have been a familiar one to the people of Luke’s community. The story of the chaos that ensues as a result of humanity’s hubris contains truths about tribalism that would have been as familiar to a first century audience as they are to a 21st century audience. 

The perils of tribalism which pits one people against another and one culture against another were ingrained in the religious traditions of the first century.     The writer of Acts uses the story of Pentecost to point to the truth of the Jesus experience. Their experience of Jesus with his radical ideas about a loving God, lead the early followers of the way to a new understanding of faith.          Empowered by Jesus full embodiment of love, the early followers felt compelled to share their experience. Faith did not have to be lived out in fear, even in the face of death. Being faithful was not about being exclusive or tribal, for love knows no boundaries. It wasn’t even about religion which is so often used by the powerful to oppress the powerless. Faith was not about purity but compassion, healing and justice. Faith didn’t need to be destructive if it heightened our awareness that the creation of which we are a part is an interconnected web.

Sadly over the years all too many Christians have seen the story of Pentecost as simply a reversal of the Tower of Babel story. But here we have so much more.      In the Tower of Babel  we have a story speaks to the origins of a kind of chaos that is the result of human arrogance. This chaos leads to disaster. And the response of the people is to adopt a kind of tribalism where eventually only one tribe becomes the chosen people. The chosen tribe then chooses to exhibit a kind of uniformity which defines who is in and who is out. 

Boundaries are established. The religious practice that emerges strives for order and uniformity.  Order is established and the faithful are encouraged to live within the rules. But in the Pentecost story the chaos and disorder is not created by humans but by God. The Pentecost story is about chaos and disorder; about God who is running amok. Boundaries are crossed. Taboos are broken.           Suddenly, like the rush of the wind young people have visions and elders have dreams; dreams and visions that threaten the established order.

Luke’s story speaks directly to his community which has become accustomed to a religion that is a product of its culture; where faith reflects the values of the tribe. Religion is used to give members of the community a sense of who was friend and who was foe. It played to their fear of others who were beyond the tribe. It grounded their xenophobia and ethnocentrism in righteousness.  It served as the glue that told its adherents who they were and who they weren’t.           Religion gave people an illusion of living in an orderly and predictable world.

Outside the boundaries of their religion was a place of chaos. Its inhabitants were judged to be demonic or subhuman. In the early history of Israel those who worshipped gods outside the culture were labeled idolaters. Identifying idolaters gave the faithful of the local religion a target for their contempt and hostility and someone to blame for their disappointments and failures. Along comes Jesus who challenges the status quo along with the powers that be who maintain order by force of might. Violence, greed, and force become the tools to the Pax Romana, which insisted that the way to peace was through force. First you conquer a people, then you wield your power over them to control them so that you can tax them and the status quo is the only kind of peace one can hope for.     And along comes Jesus who points to another way to peace through justice.             People want to believe they want to follow Jesus but their fearful of the chaos that might ensue.  Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.          Chaos is frightening.

Into that mix the writer of Luke offers his story of Pentecost which displays the Spirit of God at work in the midst of chaos. The followers of Jesus are calling their communities out of the constraints of the religious practices of their day. 

The Pentecost story reflects the early Christian understanding of Jesus as a leader who didn’t just address the Chosen People but who engaged the Syrophoenician woman, the Centurion, and the Samaritan leper.

Luke, in the telling of the story of Pentecost, already knew that Christianity had spread to the edge of the known world and to its very centre in Rome.    Christianity had already transcended tribe and tradition.  Jesus inspired a religion of the poor and the powerless without an enemy or enmity and yet inclusive in its membership.

Christianity was as outrageous as a woman who wore a hat, gloves, shoes and nothing else. Sadly, it didn’t take long for the early Christians to try to put the Spirit back in the box.

The story of Pentecost shows the Spirit of God out of the box, prancing about in the town square and intoxicating the people with the sheer beauty of her audacity.

Luke’s Pentecost story served to remind those first Christians of the Jesus call to diversity. That call to diversity has the power to contradict the power of the status quo of tribalism that was exemplified in the story of the Tower of Babel.

The followers of the Way are able to declare that in Christ there is no East nor West, no North nor South, no Jew nor Gentile, no man nor woman.

Luke has crafted the story of Pentecost that declares that in Christ there is no longer Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappodocia, Pontus, Asisa, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the ports of Libya around Cyrene, nor even Romans.  All are one as Christ is One.

In Jesus the followers of the way are challenged to think beyond tribalism, to dream dreams and see visions.

Luke’s Pentecost story calls us to a similar awakening.

An awakening that begs the question:  What kind of Pentecost stories are we called to craft?

Can we 21st century followers of the Way produce Pentecost stories that will boldly declare that we are one with our Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Taoist sisters and brothers, and what about atheists, agnostics and all the poor and the powerless?

I hope that the audacity of God’s Spirit can call us out of our status quo religious practices that keep us from exploring the wonders of the chaos that lies beyond our established religious order.

Imagine a 21st century Pentecost where rather than speaking in languages that we’ve never understood before, we begin to listen to those who we’ve failed to understand before.

Imagine a 21st century Pentecost where Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, Baha’is and adherents of all sorts of native religions that we’ve never heard of begin to listen to one another. 

Imagine an audacious Spirit calling us beyond Christianity’s exclusivism.

Imagine a vision of Christianity that celebrates not denigrates the truths of the worlds great religions.

Imagine a vision of Christianity whose first impulse is to listen rather than speak; a Christianity that is willing to share its truths in a spirit of co-operation without an emphasis on conversion.

Imagine a vision of a church full of curious Christians, who share a goal of dialogue that seeks not just to create new Christians, but to learn from other religions so that we can become better Christians and those with whom we listen and speak might become better practitioners of their faiths.

Imagine a vision of Pentecost where the wind and the fire represent God out of the box.

Do we have the courage to strip ourselves of the trappings of status quo Christianity and venture out into the world free of the taboos of tradition? Do we have the courage to listen and learn from the truths of other tribes? Do we have the wisdom to embrace divinely inspired chaos?  Some dreams and visions have to be believed before they can be seen.

If the Reign of God is to be realized in all its chaotic splendour, we must put on a new hat, and strip ourselves of the ethnocentrism and chauvinism that cloaks our faith and walk brazenly down the aisle.

Open to the MYSTERY

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“Infinity always gives me vertigo and fills me up with grace.”

 Bruce Cockburn

 

In pondering MYSTERY we are always indebted to those who have gone before us.

What follows relies on the work of Brian McLaren and process theologian James Murray

A while back, I went to a lecture given by Brian McLaren. Brian McLaren is one of the leaders of what is being called the Emerging Church Movement, which is a movement that is trying to articulate a new kind of Christianity for the 21st century. McLaren told us a story about a friend of his named John who lives in South Africa.

John is a very wealthy successful Zulu who belongs to a Pentecostal church that preaches what is called the prosperity gospel. This is movement that insists that if you have enough faith God will see to it that you prosper and become very wealthy. Well John belongs to a very large Pentecostal church in South Africa that has tens of thousands of member. John is a very wealthy and successful businessman.  And in John’s church if you are rich you gain entry to the inner circle of the pastor and you are called an Armor Bearer.

But after being involved as an Armor Bearer for many years John becomes disillusioned. John says,  “I’m rich but a whole lot of other members of the church who are good faithful people are poor.”  These folks have been doing everything the pastor has taught them to do and for some reason God just isn’t rewarding these poor folks with riches. The pastor keeps laying hands on them and they are not getting rich. It’s worked for me, but I just can’t figure out why it’s not working for them.” So John starts to have doubts about the prosperity gospel and he is deep in doubt.

A couple of years ago John comes to his friend Brian McLaren and he tells him that he has decided to put his faith to a test. John announces that he is going to read Richard Dawkins book the God Delusion. Now for those of you who haven’t heard or read about Richard Dawkins, he is an atheist who has written several books on the fact that God is dead or just an illusion and that people of the 21st century should just get over it. So, John says he’s going to put his faith to the test and read the God Delusion and put it all on the line.  John says that, “If I become convinced by Richard Dawkins, I will give up my faith and become an atheist.”

So John starts reading, and he’s just going to put it all on the line. It’s sort of a good Pentecostal test.  And John tells his friend, “Brian, I’m a good Pentecostal and I know how to hear the voice of the Lord.  And one morning I was taking a shower and the Holy Spirit spoke to me. And the Spirit said, “This man Richard Dawkins speaks the truth.”

So John says to his friend, “Brian what do I do with this? I know the voice of God and God has told me that Richard Dawkins is speaking the truth.”

Well John is a good businessman and he doesn’t have much formal education, but he wants to figure this out. And he says to his friend, “Brian I just had to live with this terrible paradox in my mind. That God has told me that Dawkins is speaking the truth. And months went by and I was in turmoil about this.” And then he said, “It gradually began to dawn on me that the God that Dawkins doesn’t believe in is the God that the missionaries brought to my people. And it was a white god and a colonial god and that god was used to justify putting all of my people in a position of subservience.” And he said that, “It gradually began to dawn on me that Richard Dawkins is killing a god who needs to be killed.” And he said, “The strangest thing happened after this, I found myself loving Jesus Christ more than ever. Because I realized that Jesus was trying to reveal another vision of God, a vision other than the God who kills and destroys and dominates and judges.”

In Jesus’ parable: “people never put new wine in an old wineskin. If they do, the new wine will burst the skin; the wine will spill out and the skin will be ruined. No, new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. People never want new wine after they’ve been drinking the old. They say, ‘We like the old better’.”

Jesus reveals a vision of a God who is beyond our tribal instincts and understandings; a vision of a God who is beyond our fears. And yet, all too often we prefer the old God better. We long for the supernatural being out there separate from the world who from time to time intervenes in the world; that old God who is out there and who can’t be known directly, but only believed in; that old God who sits waiting on a cloud for us to die so that he can judge us and forgive us and reward us. We like the old wine better than the new wine.  And we have these old wine skins so we try putting the new wine that Jesus brings in those old skins, hoping that they will contain it. But the new wine burst the skins and pours out all over the place.

It’s the 21st century and nobody uses wine skins anymore. Why last year when we toured the vineyards of Niagara we learned that nobody’s using cork anymore. The best of the new wine comes to us in screw-top bottles. We’ve moved on and we’ve learned all sorts of things about creation, and that knowledge of creation has expanded our vision of God in ways our ancestors could never have imagined. It’s time to let the old vision of God die.

It’s time to open ourselves to what Christ has and is revealing to us about a vision of God that moves beyond our fears; a vision of God that is reflected in the cosmos as we are beginning to understand it; a vision of God that enhances our knowledge of God and calls forth a spirituality in us that sustains us in our daily living; a vision of God that helps us to experience God.

By peeling back the layers of the tradition of the Church, by unpacking the generations of theological doctrine, scholars are beginning to see a vision of God that Jesus spoke of. The new vision revealed to us in Christ, is one that reflects the reality that, “God is in the world and the world is in God and God is more than the world.” This is a vision of a relational God; a God who is intimate with the world.

We may long for the all-powerful King God, who with the stroke of his arm imposes his will upon the world, but who among us can be intimate with such a god. Is such an all-powerful God even capable of intimacy or would it be like you or I trying to caress an amoeba.

The ancient mystics found in the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures the vision of God that Jesus lived and died to reveal. They found a vision of God with us, who is compassionate and directing, using our freedom and responsibility, and calling us to use these for the good of others as well as ourselves. A vision of God that emphasizes that, although God is always an important factor in what happens, God does not control history. God is in us and we are in God but we are also members one of another, and our lives are interwoven with the wider natural context of creation as well.

God’s power is relational power as opposed to unilateral power. Unilateral power is by nature coercive—imagine the old god, the cosmic moralist, and ruling like an absolute king. This image is of a God who gives, but does not receive; acts but does not listen; demands but does not compromise; this image of God makes spirituality difficult because it ignores our identities as God’s beloved creatures, it ignores our desires.

The vision of God that Christ reveals is of a God whose power is relational, a God who gives, but also receives, acts but also responds, has a vision but is open to change and transformation. Christ reveals an image of God who creates and gives freedom and creativity to creation. Freedom and creativity are intrinsic to each of us and relational power works to value that by offering a dream or aim to each of us. The future is created out of response and anticipation. The idea of relational power is dependent on diversity, actually welcomes diversity, and offers novelty to each nano second of experience.

Christ’s image of God affirms that God has a vision, appropriate to each moment of experience and, in the broadest sense, for the vast expanses of planetary and cosmic history. God is omnipresent, in all things so there are no God forsaken places. In each moment God presents the world with possibilities. God calls us into God’s dream of the future; a dream of peace and justice and peace for all God’s creation.

If we are in God then what we do matters.  What we do and who we are impacts God. What we do can limit God, but can never defeat God. For in each moment the dream is revised and offered back to us. We can refuse but God does not stop, for there are some who listen and they will guide us. God leads us by persuasion and Christ empowers us by expanding our freedom to be what God is calling us to be, and the Spirit lives and breathes in with and through us.

All of creation is interconnected and intimately related to the Creator.  This expansive vision of God cannot be stuffed into the old wine skins of the institution. New ways of worshipping, new ways of praying, new ways of understanding will move us beyond the old image of God which has soured and turned to vinegar in those old wine skins.

Images of God are but pale reflections of God. Worshipping images of God is a problem as old as time itself.  Such worship has an ancient name. It’s called idolatry. We are called to worship God, not a pale reflection of God. So, our worship will always be incomplete for we peer through a glass darkly. So let us worship with humility, trusting Christ to show us the way.  Let us worship together, mindful that our words and rituals will fail to capture the wonders and mystery of our God, but open to the possibility that together we might capture a glimpse of God or feel the touch of God, or hear the love of God, or recognize the gifts of God as we worship together.

Let us always be prepared to let an image of God die. For we are a people who claim the power of resurrection and we know that in death there is new life. God will come to us again and again, touching, caressing, nudging, persuading, cajoling, imploring, healing, soothing; sometimes shouting, sometimes whispering, often just embracing.

God will be who God will be.  YAHWEH.

Our images of God will come and go, but God remains steadfast. The new wine that comes to us in the life of Christ brings us a foretaste of the feast to come; a taste that reminds us of our connectedness to God and to one another; a sacred connectedness.

So let our prayers open us to the reality of that connection. Let our deeds reflect the confidence that our freedom to act can change the world. Let us be about ushering in the reign of God that Jesus taught. A reign of justice and peace, where each one of God’s children is treasured as God’s beloved.

Let us live with confidence trusting that God is the source of our being.

Let us walk together trusting that God is the ground of our being.

Let us be all that we were created to be.

Jesus said over and over again, in words and in deeds: “Do not be afraid.”

So let us have the courage to drink the new wine that Christ offers and if it tastes a little strange to our palates, drink again, let the flavor move us to a new understanding, a new way of relating, a new way of being.

Let us open ourselves to the reflections of God that are all around us – open ourselves to the God who lives within us.

The Ascension Never Actually Happened – Ascension is Always Happening

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Leaving Behind the Miraculous Jesus to Welcome the Human Jesus

The celebration of Jesus’ Ascension is a church festival that I have always chosen to ignore. The ancient tradition that has Jesus floating up into the clouds stretches the credibility of the church to such an extent that I’ve always assumed that the less said about the Ascension the better. But last year I was challenged by a parishioner to try to make some sense out of the Ascension story so that 21st century Christians would not have to check their brains at the door should they happen upon a congregation that still celebrated the day. What follows is a transcript of my attempt to leave behind the miraculous Jesus in order to be better able to welcome the human Jesus down from the clouds. I am indebted to Bishop John Shelby Spong together with Clay Nelson of St Matthew-in-the-city for their liberating insights.  

Traditionally, on the 40th day after Easter, the church celebrates the feast of the Ascension. But because so few people in the 21st century are willing to come to church during the week, the Ascension is celebrated by the church on the first Sunday after the feast of the Ascension. Since I have been your pastor we have not celebrated Ascension Sunday. But as this particular Ascension Sunday follows so closely after Jack Spong’s visit with us, I thought that it was about time that rather than avoid the Ascension, I’d like to try to confront it.

Jack has been telling his anti-Ascension story for quite a few years now. Just in case you’ve never heard it or have forgotten it, let me remind you. It seems that Jack was speaking with Carl Sagan, the world-renowned astronomer and astrophysicist. Jack says that Carl Sagan once told him  “if Jesus literally ascended into the sky and traveled at the speed of light, then he hasn’t yet escaped our galaxy.”

With that said, let me just say, that the Ascension never actually happened. It is not an historical event. If a tourist with a video camera had been there in Bethany they would have recorded absolutely nothing. 

I know what the Nicene Creed says, “Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” But like the members of the early church, I do not have a literal understanding of the scriptures. And so, as I do not understand the Bible literally, neither do I understand the Nicene Creed to be a literal interpretation of the faith. Like all creeds the Nicene, Apostles and Athanasian creeds are snapshots of theology as it was at a particular time in history.

We would do well to remember that the Creeds were developed to answer questions about the faith in a time when people understood the cosmos to be comprised of a flat earth, where God resides above in the heavens and located beneath the earth were the pits of hell. I know that the universe is infinite.  I also know about gravity. I also know that it is highly unlikely that Jesus had helium flowing through his veins.  I’ve flown around the world, and I can tell you that there is no heaven above the clouds. So, I can say with confidence that:  The very present Jesus of resurrection faith did not literally elevate into heaven while his disciples looked on.

The writer of the Gospel according to Luke and the Book of Acts are one and the same person. The same writer wrote the Gospel according to Luke to tell the story of the life of Jesus and the Book of Acts to tell the story of the Holy Spirit at work in the followers of Jesus.  Although we don’t know who the author was, we do know that he was not an historian. Neither Luke nor Acts are historical accounts. They are both addressed to a character named Theopholus. Theopholus is  Greek for lover of God. The books are addressed to the lovers of God, that’s you and me and the author makes it clear that he has written these books so that we, the lovers of God, can believe and have faith.  The books were written somewhere near the end of the first century. Somewhere between 50 to 60 years after the death of Jesus.  Perhaps between 80 and 95 of this Common Era.

The important question for most biblical scholars is not whether the Ascension actually happened but rather, what did the Ascension mean to the author in his context. And to that question we might add a more pressing question: Given what the Ascension meant in the first century, does it continue to have any relevance for those of us who live in the 21st century?

I believe that the followers of Jesus experiences of Jesus the man were so overwhelming that they saw in him the human face of God. I also believe that in very powerful ways the followers of Jesus continued to experience Jesus presence.

Those powerful experiences of Jesus after his death were so intense that they defied description. Given that Jesus was now dead and gone, yet his presence still seemed to be with them, the followers of Jesus used the Hebrew story of Elijah and Elisha to construct a belief about the Spirit of Jesus continuing to be powerfully among them.

By the time the writer of Luke and Acts got around to writing these stories down, there were different versions of the story being passed around in the early church. The writer of Luke/Acts paints a picture of a re-formed bodily Jesus going up into the heavens in the Ascension and a windy, fiery Spirit coming down at Pentecost. The writer uses powerful familiar Hebrew images to portray the experiences of Jesus’ followers after his death.

In order for us to move beyond the literal and beyond the historical and even beyond the metaphorical meaning to arrive at the meaning that the story of the Ascension can have for us today in this time and in this place, I’d like to tell you two stories that I heard about from a preacher who serves an Anglican parish in Auckland, New Zealand. Clay Nelson is a friend of Jack Spong who tells great stories.  The first story is an actual, literal, historically accurate Ascension story followed by a metaphorical Ascension story.

The literal historical Ascension story took place in 1982. But it the story that actually began some twenty years earlier when Larry Walters was just 13 years old and he saw weather balloons hanging from the ceiling of an Army & Navy surplus store. It was then that Larry knew that some day he would be carried up to the heavens by balloons. Sure enough when he was 33 years old, on July 2nd 1982, Larry Walters tied 42 helium-filled balloons to a lawn chair in the backyard of his girlfriend’s house in San Pedro, California. With the help of his friends, Larry secured himself into the lawn chair that was anchored to the bumper of a friend’s car, by two nylon tethers. Larry packed several sandwiches and a six-pack of Miller Lite and loaded his pellet gun so that he could pop a few balloons when he was ready to come down. His goal was to sail across the desert and hopefully make it to the Rocky Mountains in a few days.

But things didn’t quite work out for Larry. When he cut the cord anchoring the lawn chair the second one snapped, launching Larry into the skies above Los Angeles. Instead of leveling off at about 30 feet as he’d planned, Larry rose to 16,000 feet and at that height Larry couldn’t risk shooting any of the balloons.    So he stayed up there drifting cold and frightened for more than 14 hours when he found himself in the primary flight approach corridor for LAX.

Legend has it that a Pan Am pilot was the first to spot Larry and quickly radioed the tower telling them that he’d just passed a guy in a lawn chair with a gun. The Federal Aviation Administration was not amused. Larry started shooting out the balloons to start his descent but accidentally dropped the gun. After drifting for a couple of hours he eventually landed in a Long Beach neighbourhood entangled in some power lines. Larry survived without any serious injuries.

Now that is an historically accurate ascension story. It’s a funny story and a true story, but it is not a life changing story. But Larry did inspire a wonderful Australian movie, called Danny Deckchair, which is untrue, is in fact full of truth. Now when a New Zealander recommends an Australian movie, I take notice, so yesterday I watched Danny Deckchair and I do believe that it is a modern metaphorical interpretation of the Ascension.

The movie’s hero, Danny, is a bored labourer who drives a cement mixer. Danny is an unlikely Christ figure whose story is similar to Larry’s. Danny ascends from his backyard in Sydney during a barbecue and lands less than gracefully in a small town in the Australian outback. By this act of departure and arrival everything changes not only for Danny, but also for those he left behind and those he meets in the outback. Danny’s unique departure inspires those at home to take risks of their own: to live life more boldly, to act on their dreams, to become all they can be.

In acting out his dream, Danny finds new confidence and becomes the source of inspiration and affirmation for the townsfolk in the outback who used to see themselves as backwater hicks, but now see the importance of their actions in the life of their town. Everyone is transformed by Danny’s ascension. New Life and love accompany his resurrection.

The writer of Luke/Acts two versions of Jesus’ Ascension are not true like Larry’s lift off but are true like Danny Deckchair.  While the event certainly did not happen in a literal way, the story does attempt to capture the quality of a real man whose coming and going in their lives changed them forever.  The writer of Luke/Acts Ascension story is not so miraculous after all. The Ascension story is about the joy the disciples felt about the ongoing ever so real presence of Jesus after his death. The God they saw in Jesus they found in themselves. In Jesus’ departure they discovered that they could love as wastefully as he did.  They could live abundantly as Jesus did. They could heal and reconcile just as Jesus did.  With Jesus pointing the way they had found God and while Jesus was gone, the God that Jesus pointed to was everywhere, even in them.

If we are to move beyond the literal, beyond the historical, beyond the metaphorical to the life-changing meaning of the stories that have been handed down to us, we may just have to give up our tenacious hold upon the notion of Jesus as some sort of miracle worker who defies the laws of gravity, and time and space.

If we are to engage the stories about Jesus in a way that allows those stories to intersect with our lives we will have to embrace Jesus’ humanity. My Kiwi colleague Clay Nelson puts it like this:  “If your faith is sustained by a miraculous understanding of Jesus that has to ignore what you know about the real world, then let me ask you: Is it a faith that can sustain you in the real world?             Eventually this world of advancing scientific knowledge, that no longer requires a personal God to create, heal and sustain life will make the God we have had irrelevant, if it hasn’t already. I think God would rather be dead than irrelevant.             And if God is irrelevant, Jesus, who has been portrayed by the author of Luke/Acts and the church as the incarnation of this God, will suffer the same fate. If he hasn’t already.”

Nelson reminds us that Jesus was human and the human Jesus does not suffer the fate of an irrelevant god.. “The human Jesus, instead of only showing us God in all God’s glory, also shows us in all of ours. This Jesus becomes a window through which we can glimpse the mystery of love and life and being we are all called into. This Jesus through his radical love of even his enemies invites us into that mystery that surrounds us and is part of our very being.  This Jesus becomes the doorway through which I’m willing to walk into that mystery. For this mystery, I am willing to die to have new life. Mystery makes sense to me, the miraculous doesn’t. The mysterious Jesus inspires me and calls me to new levels of being. The miraculous Jesus helps me as much as telling a child that Santa comes down chimneys. The mysterious Jesus sustains my faith.  The miraculous Jesus impedes my faith.”

Like my Kiwi colleague Clay, I no longer need to believe in a miraculous Jesus in order to experience the mysterious Christ who lives and breathes in with and through Christ’s body here and now.

The writer of Luke/Acts is preparing his audience of God lovers for the arrival on the scene of the very Spirit of God that lived and breathed in with and through Jesus.

So, as we approach the celebration of Pentecost, may you find in these stories handed down to us by our ancestors in the faith an inkling of the powerful presence that Jesus’ first followers experienced after Jesus had left them.

May the joy they felt at the realization that the God they saw in Jesus they now found in themselves. May the realizations that those first followers experienced in Jesus’ departure, when they discovered they could love as extravagantly as Jesus did, that they could live as abundantly as Jesus did. That they could bring about healing and reconciliation just as Jesus did. 

May these realizations live and breath and have their being in you. May you know the joy of seeing Jesus point the way, the joy of finding God, may you know the God Christ points to who is everywhere, even in you. May you love as extravagantly as Jesus loved. May you live as abundantly as Jesus lived.             May you be Christ’s Body here and now, in this place in this time!

Read about the real Lawn-chair Larry here

MOTHERS’ DAY – Peace is the Way

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Most of us think of Mothers’ Day as a kind of conventional holiday that celebrates traditional family values; the kind of traditional values that encourage women who are mothers to keep on keeping on.  But celebrating the traditional motherhood is definitely not what Mothers’ Day was originally intended for.  The very first Mothers’ Day was intended to be a celebration not just of mothers, but rather it was designed to be a call to action by all women. 

One of the first founders of Mother’s Day was Anna Jarvis back in 1858.  Anna Jarvis gathered women of the Appalachian mountains together in what she called mother’s day work clubs. Where women worked together to eliminate poverty.  When the Civil War came about, the mother’s day work clubs created medical camps.  They were places of nonviolence for men from both sides who were wounded in the war. 

At the end of the Civil War, Anna Jarvis organized the Mother’s Day Friendship Day, which was a call for radical peace.  Anna Jarvis brought together the leaders from the north and the south for a time of reconciliation.  Mother’s Day was originally about reconciliation and peace.

Then along came a  woman named, Julia Ward Howe who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Julia Ward Howe called for women to protest the cruelties of war everywhere and to gather together to call for peace.  She called for a national day of peace for all women.  She issued women’s’ declaration, and from the streets women shouted :

“Arise then women of this day, arise all women who have hearts, say firmly our husbands shall not come to us reeking with the carnage for caresses and applause.  Arise women of peace.” 

Anna Jarvis’ daughter also named Anna Jarvis approached President Wilson and petitioned for a national Mother’s Day.  It was Woodrow Wilson who called for the second Sunday of May to be the national Mother’s Day. Shortly thereafter, n anti-suffragette movement spoke out against the women who were calling for peace.  So instead of being a day for women who were active and present in the world, it became a day to celebrate mothers who stayed at home with the children.

Anna Jarvis the founder of Mother’s Day was so angry with Woodrow Wilson that she filed a law suit, that petitioned the courts to put a stop to Mother’s Day because as the court papers insisted, instead of it being run by women, suddenly Mother’s Day was being run by men in an effort to keep them in the house barefoot and pregnant. 

Sadly, the world was not ready for such strong willed women to shout out loud. And so, Anna Jarvis was arrested at a Mother’s Day celebration and she spent the rest of her life in a sanatorium? 

On mothers’ day we would all do well to remember Julia Ward Howe’s Mothers’ Day Proclamation.  Dated 1870 but sadly it is still so very relevant today:

“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!” The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

Even Eunuchs and Foreigners are Welcome!

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I’m told that preachers should never read old sermons. But I’m on sabbatical and so I’m reflecting on where I’ve been and what I’ve learned. I learn a great deal on my weekly quest for the sermon. So, reflecting on where I have been will include reading some old sermons. What follows is a sermon I preached on the 5th Sunday of Easter 2003. In the nine years since I preached that sermon the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada has come a long way. The debate about the full inclusion of GLBT folk in the full life of the church has been resolved. But rule changes don’t always change practices. Sadly, there are still places in our church were not everyone is welcome.  So, I offer this sermon to cybersapce as both a reminder of where we have been and how far we need to travel. Shalom. 

Sunday May 18th 2003

Holy Cross Lutheran

Even Eunuchs and Foreigners are Welcome!

Acts 8:26-40

Earlier this week, I was talking with a few of my colleagues. And as Lutheran Pastors are wont to do, our conversation drifted toward the lessons prescribed for this Sunday.  As we kicked around ideas, most of us agreed that it is difficult to preach on familiar passages.           

Most of you have heard a great many sermons on today’s gospel lesson, and so the challenge for preachers to bring some new insights is made all the more difficult.  So, we joked about just how many ways a preacher can twist and turn those vines until they finally snap off, dry up and rot.

Today’s epistle lesson isn’t much easier.  Preachers are always preaching about love; often we’re preaching to the choir, because most of you already know how much God loves us and how much God wants us to love one another.  Coming up with a new and interesting angle on the second lesson isn’t easy.  So, I suggested to my colleagues that this Sunday rather than preaching one more time about love, why not preach on the first lesson. Why not preach on the story of the Apostle Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian on the road to Gaza? Well it might surprise you to know that no matter how challenging they thought it would be to come up with one more sermon about love, not one of my colleagues thought that it would be a good idea to preach about the goings on in the desert between Philip and that Ethiopian. One of my colleagues even went so far as to say that you would have to be either very brave or very foolish to even try it.

Now I have a confession to make, at the time I had no idea what it was in this particular passage that would make my colleagues so averse to preaching on it. I have to admit that I don’t really remember ever paying all that much attention to this particular story. I have certainly never before studied it in any great detail, but my colleagues’ aversion for this text, made me curious enough to hit the books just as soon as I got home. Despite the fact that this text shows up every three years in our lectionary, try as I might, I wasn’t able to find a reference to a single published sermon on this particular text. It seems that many the great preachers left this one alone.

It didn’t take me long to figure out just why this text is so daunting and why my colleagues are not alone in giving it such a wide berth. Now I don’t claim to be particularly brave, but I’ve already preached on today’s other readings. Besides it’s a long weekend and I figured that a lot of people would be away and I could sneak this one in. So this fool is about to rush in, where many have feared to tread.

Our story begins when an angel directs the apostle Philip to go south on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. On this road in the desert Philip meets and Ethiopian eunuch. Now I don’t know about you, but this strikes me as a really odd way to introduce someone.  No name, just an Ethiopian eunuch, the author must have thought it was important because he tells us not once but five times that the Ethiopian was a eunuch. I know what an Ethiopian is.  Philip has encountered a black African man in the desert. Now that in and of it’s self is pretty remarkable. You will see later that this black man was the first missionary to Africa.

But surely this can’t be the reason why so many preachers shy away from this text. So what exactly is a eunuch? According to the most current scholarship, in the first century a eunuch is one of two things. A eunuch could have been a man who had been castrated.  Now for those of you who didn’t grow up on a farm to castrate means to remove a male’s testicles. So, this particular Ethiopian could have been a castrated male, or he could have been a male who wasn’t like most males. According to the scholars men who showed a preference for other men or displayed little or no interest in women, or who were in anyway effeminate, in the first century these men were called eunuchs.

At this particular time in history, Eunuchs had three major roles in society.  Because it was either physically impossible for them to father children, or because of their preferences highly unlikely that they would father children, eunuchs were often employed as military officers, domestic servants, or treasury officers. Without the responsibilities of children, it was thought that eunuchs would be fiercer soldiers because they wouldn’t be worried about saving their own skins so that they could be around to take care of their children. Without children of their own to worry about eunuchs were also free to be domestic servants and because of their lack of interest eunuchs would be safe to employ around women. Because they were unlikely to father children, rulers could trust that eunuchs wouldn’t seek hereditary power so they were often entrusted with positions in the treasury because they wouldn’t need to amass wealth to pass on to their children.

This particular Ethiopian eunuch was a court official to the queen of the Ethiopians.  Remember the Queen of Sheba, she was a queen of the Ethiopians. At the time Ethiopa was a wealthy and sophisticated place. An Ethiopian queen was called a Candace. So this particular Ethiopian eunuch was a court official in charge of the entire treasury of a rich and powerful queen.

Eunuchs we’re popular employees with queens, who didn’t want anybody casting aspersions on any of their offspring.  Now, while rulers entrusted eunuchs with certain key positions, they were pretty much shunned by the rest of society.        They were outcasts.

According to our story, this Ethiopian eunuch had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home. Now the Bible is very clear on the subject of eunuchs and worship.  According to the Book of Deuteronomy, which contains the law as it was laid out by Moses, eunuchs were forbidden to worship in the house of God.

Deuteronomy 23:  “A man whose testicles have been crushed or whose male member has been cut off is not to be admitted to the assembly of Yahweh.” Eunuchs weren’t welcome in God’s house.

Mind you, according to the Bible none of you are welcome here in God’s house. The Bible forbids the wearing of more than one type of cloth at the same time. According to Leviticus 21:20, anyone who is wearing glasses shouldn’t be here either, because one should not approach the altar of the Lord if they have a defect in their sight.

Did you know that it is an abomination before God to work on the Sabbath and according to Exodus 35: 2 anybody who works on the Sabbath should be put to death. Those of you who cut your grass yesterday, which according to the Bible is the Sabbath, those of you who worked around the house yesterday, well you should be rounded up and executed.

Any women out there who are having their period according to the Bible you ought to leave right now, because you are unclean and you’re making the rest of us unclean as well. And you men needn’t bother smiling, because any of you who have had your hair trimmed, including the hair around your temples ought to know that according to Leviticus 19:27 this is strictly forbidden. And as near as I can tell the penalty for those haircuts of yours is death by stoning.

Now don’t go telling me that the New Testament means that the laws of the Old Testament are no longer valid, because in the New Testament Jesus insists that he has not come to abolish the law, for Jesus said, “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped.” According to the New Testament the law stands.

Now lucky for you, I don’t take the Bible literarily otherwise…. what am I saying if I took the Bible literally…I’d have to keep my mouth shut, women are supposed to keep silent in church!

All I know is if you take the Bible literally then we’d need a pretty big pile of stones and very few of us would make it out of here alive.

Fortunately for us, our church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, together with most of the mainline churches like the Roman Catholic, Anglican, United, Mennonite, Presbyterian, and many others does not teach or preach that the Bible is to be taken literally. Literal interpretations of scripture belong to those denominations and faiths that are called fundamentalists. Christian fundamentalism is just as perverse and just as dangerous as Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism.  Fundamentalist Christians represent a small but vocal minority within the Christian church.  Lutheran’s are not fundamentalists.

The next time someone asks you if you believe in the Bible, the answer is no, believing in the bible is a form of idolatry! We don’t believe in the bible. We believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel can be found in the Bible, but the Gospel cannot be contained by the Bible.

Jesus Christ is the Word of God, Jesus’ life, death and resurrection reveal the true nature of our loving and gracious God.

Like Jesus we are free to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture.

Like Martin Luther we teach that Scripture should always be interpreted in the light of the Gospel.

Like Jesus we proclaim that wherever two or more of us are gathered in Christ’s name Christ is there also and the Holy Spirit will direct and guide us.

Like Luther we teach that the scripture should not be studied in isolation but in community, so that, guided by the Spirit the community can correct and steer the believer in light of the Gospel.

Therefore, guided by the Holy Spirit I can say that all of you are saints and sinners, and all of you are welcome here in God’s house, despite your haircuts, your impaired sight, your multi-materialed clothing, or the state of your gentiles.

Therefore, guided by the Holy Spirit, I can stand here, as a woman, without a hat, wearing my glasses, and proclaim the Gospel, wearing I don’t know how many different types of material.

Therefore, none of you will have to go home from here today and drag your children out into the town square so that for the crime of not properly honoring their parents your kids can be stoned until they are dead, as per the instructions laid out in the Bible.

Because in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we know that God is love and nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and all that God wants from us is that we should love God and love our neighbours as we love ourselves.

But just try telling that to the religious authorities in Jerusalem at the turn of the first century.

You can bet your bottom dollar, that the Black African, gentile, Ethiopian, Eunuch, wasn’t welcome in the Temple. So he left Jerusalem and was on his way back home, riding in his chariot, reading aloud. That he was reading the scriptures aloud is not the remarkable part. You see the concept of reading silently in your head, hadn’t been invented yet, all readers read aloud in those days. We know from Augustine that up until the fifth century, people hadn’t figured out how to read silently! In fact when people first began to read silently in their heads, the religious authorities thought that it must be the work of the devil and more than a few of those quiet readers were burnt at the stake.

What is really remarkable is that the Ethiopian eunuch actually had to read at all or that he actually knew how to read. This Ethiopian eunuch must have been fairly well off because he was reading from the book of the Prophet of Isaiah and one of those scrolls would set you back quite a bit at the turn of the first century. So, we know he is a man of some wealth and importance, because not only can he afford his own scroll but he actually knows how to read it, not in his native tongue, but in Greek.

I can just imagine him riding along, ticked that he wasn’t welcome in the temple because of his identity as a eunuch, reading of all things the book of the prophet Isaiah. Somehow, we’re not told how, the Spirit tells the Apostle Philip to run after the chariot and join it. Philip goes after the chariot and he must have heard what the Ethiopian eunuch is reading and recognized it, because Philip asks him if he understands what he is reading. Apparently he must have been having some difficulty because he invites Philip to hop in and explain.

The passage the Ethiopian eunuch was reading was about the Suffering Servant of God, who was “cut off” from the people of God. It was no accident he was reading this.  Surely, he was trying to figure out why he himself was being cut off from the people of God because if he was reading this passage, he likely also read the neighboring passages where God promised to bless all those who had been excluded and cut off because they were different.

Isaiah writes:  “Sing, O barren one who did not bear; burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor!”…”and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree….I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off…Thus says the Most High God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel…”  (54:1;56:4-8)

Yahweh declares:  “eunuchs who keep the Sabbath and follow the covenant will have an everlasting name and blessing, better even than sons and daughters, an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

Just imagine how powerful these words were in a time when the whole promise of eternity hinged on sons and daughters, something a eunuch could never have. It was as if Isaiah was speaking directly to the Ethiopian eunuch.  Foreigners and eunuchs were supposed to be welcomed at God’s table! Those who had been excluded were supposed to be included, despite the fact that the religious authorities were hung up on the rules that were laid out in Moses day.

The Apostle Philip shared the Good News of Jesus with the Ethiopian eunuch. This Suffering Servant the eunuch was reading about was someone he could identify with. This was a Messiah who had been cut off, just like him.

Suddenly the labels that prevented this man from full inclusion in the assembly of the people of God are overcome…and not even the arid desert can defeat them, for suddenly there is some water and the man asks Philip: “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

Well according to the rules, Philip should have answered “there’s everything to prevent you from being baptized.” First of all, the Ethiopian eunuch hasn’t confessed what it is he believes. He hasn’t been to baptismal classes. Philip isn’t an ordained minister, this is not an emergency and he doesn’t even know how to baptize.  Anyway the church hasn’t yet approved the baptism of gentiles let alone foreign black eunuchs.

No Lutheran pastor would baptize you without first attending to the rules. The church needs a little good order. Without the rules where would we be? Surely we can’t just baptize anyone and everyone who asks for baptism.  Besides the bible says…

But what does Philip do when the eunuch asks him, “What’s to prevent me from being baptized?” Philip jumps into the water and baptizes the man. No, messing around, no consulting the rules, no calling the Bishop to see if its all right. Philip doesn’t answer the eunuch with any of our concerns, he doesn’t ask the Ethiopian if he is an open and practicing eunuch or if he’s a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of eunuch.

Nor does Philip qualify his response with reservations, such as: “well, we can baptize you, but we can never ordain you.”  Or “well we can baptize you, but we can’t promise not do discriminate against you.”

The Apostle Philip doesn’t share the church’s concerns. The Ethiopian commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. Philip just hops out of the chariot, and jumps into the water and boldly baptizes this inquiring, scripture-reading, Christ-seeking eunuch.

And maybe, just maybe we can learn something from Philip’s radical act. Maybe instead of talking and arguing among ourselves for years and years, we ought to just jump into the water and trust the Spirit to take care of the details.

According to the story when they came up out of the water, the Spirit snatched Philip away and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.  On his way rejoicing, this unnamed Ethiopian eunuch, became the first Christian in Africa, and is the patron saint of Ethiopia.

Indecently, the Christian church in Ethiopa was in existence long before the church in Rome. Ethiopia has one the longest standing Christian communities in the world. Today, most of the people of Ethiopia are Christians. Centuries of Christianity resulted from Philip’s unlikely mission to an Ethiopian eunuch, through the Holy Spirit’s call to cross the traditional boundaries that existed.

Those traditional boundaries could be supported by quoting scripture and yet the Spirit prompted Philip to cross those boundaries anyway. In the church, we have helped to build and also to tear down some of the strongest boundaries of all.

Some boundaries we have begun to break down, through the Spirit’s help, and others we have only strengthened by our action or our inaction.

In the name of Christ, Christians have justified slavery and Christians have fought against slavery.

In the name of Christ, Christians have oppressed women and Christians have fought against the oppression of women.

In the name of Christ, Christians have condemned gay and lesbian people and Christians have affirmed gay and lesbian people.

The Gospel is not a respecter of boundaries.

It doesn’t matter what the religious establishment says, no one is cut off from Gods’ love.

Scripture insists, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”

The Holy Spirit is driving us into the world.  We are not being sent to condemn, but to offer the benefits of the grace and love of God, so, that in the words of the prophet Isaiah, God’s house will become, “a house of prayer for all people.”

A house of prayer for all people, for God is love and there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can separate us from Gods love in Christ Jesus.

The this dear sisters and brothers is the gospel of our God.

So what in the world are we waiting for, for Christ’s sake, let’s jump into the water so that we too can be on our way rejoicing.  Amen.

What’s a Meta for? Musing on John 10

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John chapter 10 causes me to remember Mrs. Tanner. I can still see her handwriting all over my carefully crafted compositions. Red ink everywhere as she constantly admonished me not to mix my metaphors. Clearly the writer of the Gospel of John never had the benefit of Mrs. Tanner’s guidance, or he would not have dared to record Jesus words the way he does in his long and rambling I AM passages.

Before we even get to chapter 10, we read that Jesus says:  “I AM the bread of life.”  and “I AM the light of the world.”  In chapter 10, we read, Jesus says, “I AM the gate,” “I AM the Good Shepherd.” Later we will read, that Jesus says, “I AM the Resurrection”, “I AM life.” “I AM the true vine.”  “I AM the way.” “I AM in God.” “I AM in you.”

But in the tenth chapter the writer of the Gospel of John goes all out and has Jesus using not just a metaphor but a mixed metaphor. For in chapter 10, we read that Jesus declared: “I AM the Gate. The gate through which the sheep must pass.” and then mixes it up by saying,  “I AM the Good Shepherd.”

Which is it? Gate or Shepherd, come on, I know your Jesus but I’m trying to understand how Jesus, who is after all, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is both the Gate and the Shepherd.

I wonder if Mrs. Tanner ever took her red pen to the Gospel of John? If she did, the letters MMX would have appeared all over this Gospel. MMX = mixed metaphor wrong!

Looking back, I know that Mrs Tanner was just trying to help us to be more careful about our ideas. But today I would have to ask of her, and indeed of the writer of the Gospel of John, “What’s a meta   for?”

The word metaphor comes from two ancient Greek words:  meta means beyond, phor comes from a verb that means to carry. A metaphor is a figure of speech that carries you beyond the actual meaning of the words. A mixed metaphor is a figure of speech that that includes a mixture of images.

English teachers don’t like mixed metaphors. It’s taken me years to understand why. You see you have to have great skill to get away with using a mixed metaphor. The average person simply sounds foolish when they mix their metaphors. So, you might well ask, “Is the writer of the Gospel of John skilled enough to use a mixed metaphor.

 Well in the words of the writer of the Gospel of John, let me say,  “Truly I tell you, this is no ordinary writer of metaphors.”  For the words of the writer of the Gospel of John carry us way beyond words to the Great I AM.

I AM, the very name of God.  YAHWEH, the name revealed by Moses in days of old.  I AM, WHO AM. The writer of this Gospel carries us beyond the WORD; the WORD that is Jesus the Christ, beyond the WORD to God’s very self.  Now that’s what a meta is for!

The problem is the writer of the Gospel of John was a little too clever for our own good. Sure, his second century audience would have understood his skillful use of metaphor. But down through the centuries the Christian church has mixed his metaphors to such a degree, that we don’t have much of a clue who Jesus was, let alone the great I AM to whom both Jesus and the writer of the Gospel of John are trying to carry us too.

We can’t seem to get the metaphor of Jesus as the Lamb of God out of our heads. In fact into every one of the great I AM metaphors we mix a little dab of the blood of the lamb and before you know it Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and unless you believe that Jesus blood was shed for you, you won’t ever be able to understand that you are washed by the blood of the lamb and you will never ever be able to pass through the gate, because Jesus is the only way.   MMX, MMX, MMX!

It’s not the writer of the Gospel of John who mixed the metaphors up it is the Christian Church. Somewhere along the way, the religious authorities forgot what a metaphor is for.

Instead of letting the words carry them beyond the literal meaning to the Great I AM, they slaughtered the lamb of God and killed the Word so that the wonders of the God who refuses to be pinned down by a name, the God who insists that YAHWEH is my name and will be for all generations.

 YAHWEH the inexpressible name that can be translated as I AM, or I AM WHO AM, or I AM WHO I AM or  I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.  The Great I AM.

That our God, the creator of universes of all that ever was and ever shall be should choose the verb “to be” as God’s own name, now there’s a metaphor. Talk about a word that carries you beyond the meaning of the word:  YAHWEH

I still think that the Hindu, Upanishads say it best when they say God is beyond the beyond and beyond that also. Our God is the very essence of being!

The writer of the Gospel of John and now doubt Jesus himself is the wisest of the wise when it comes to the use of metaphor. Too bad the church can’t seem to play in the big leagues. Too bad we have to reduce the beauty of the great I AM sayings down to one simple figure of speech.

 We are so hung up on Jesus as the Lamb of God that we can’t seem to see Jesus in any other way.  So we read a snippet of the gospel and we hear Jesus talking about a shepherd and we are carried away with thoughts of God as the great big shepherd. So, we slap Psalm 23, right there just incase the folks in the pew don’t make the connection themselves. And before you know it we’ve mixed the metaphor up and added a lamb, cause we remember all that other metaphor about the lost sheep, and then try as we might we just can’t help being carried away to the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Now we have a shepherd who does either one of two things. This shepherd either lets the lamb be sacrificed, or this shepherd does the sacrificing.  Now if you’re not confused yet, then I’m not doing my job correctly. Because what I wanted to do is point out the dangers of not appreciating the art of metaphor.

The writer of the Gospel of John was a master craftsman, skillfully weaving together the images of YAHWEH that his Jewish listeners would have understood in a heartbeat. They knew their own Scriptures and the images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd would have carried them beyond the sheep in the field to the words of the Prophet of Ezekiel who echoed the promises of YAHWEH to the people of Israel. They would have heard YAHWEH instruct the prophet to speak out against the religious authorities, the shepherds who had lead the people into dangerous territory and allowed the flock to be scattered and lost.

They would have heard YAHWEH promising to send a proper shepherd, a good shepherd, who would gather the flocks, tend their wounds and restore them to good pastures. And they would have known that this Jesus was such a shepherd. And they would have rejoiced to have such a shepherd in their midst. And they would have understood perfectly why the religious authorities accused Jesus of being possessed.  For surely the religious authorities were the shepherds who had lead the sheep into dangers territory.

 After Jesus died the horrible death that he died, his followers struggled to understand what had happened and why it happened and they looked to their own Sacred Scriptures to try to make sense of it all. There were competing theories about why it happened and what it all meant. That Jesus was the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep was one theory. That Jesus was the Lamb who was sacrificed to atone for the sins of the world was another theory. Two competing metaphors that we all too often mix together and end up with at best an impotent God who stands by while and innocent lamb is slaughtered or at worse a vengeful God who demands a blood sacrifice. These are not metaphors that ought to be mixed.

            It is better to live with the mystery of divinity in our midst than it is to claim to have bottled divinity for easy consumption. When we bottle divinity and sell it like snake oil we do tremendous harm.  We need to learn to dance among the metaphors that carried our ancestors beyond the literal words so that they could begin to relate to our God WHO WILL BE WHO GOD WILL BE, I AM, WHO I AM.

YAHWEH is more than capable of being both shepherd and lamb. We only need to remember that these metaphors operate independently of one another and God is not the shepherd who let the lamb die, nor is God the shepherd that demanded a sacrifice. The beauty of a metaphor is that it doesn’t always carry you to the same place. Metaphors have a multitude of destinations. Each of us must have the courage to go beyond the literal word and explore the places that the word takes us. If we must mix metaphors, we must take care to remember whom it is who carries us beyond the beyond and beyond that also.    

Let the Mystery of God,  live and breath in you. Let abundant life flourish around you!  Enjoy the dance! Rejoice in God beyond all knowing: YAHWEH, Christ and Spirit One.

PRACTICING RESURRECTION – Sermon April 15 2012

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This Sunday I tried something new: introducing a video clip into the sermon! You can view the video within the written text of the sermon below or listen to the audio version provided. I am indebted to the work of James Rowe Adams for much of the New Testament Scholarship in this sermon.

The Scripture texts were John chapter 20:19-31 and Acts 4:32-35

Audio Version of the Sermon click here

Practicing Resurrection

Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed!  Alleluia!

So, Christ is Risen!  So What???

What can it possibly mean to you and to me, that a rag-tag bunch of Jesus’ followers gathered together in an upper-room and talked about their experiences of Jesus and decided that not even death could extinguish the life that they experienced in Jesus? What difference does it make to you or to I that Christ is risen?

The truth is that it can make absolutely no difference what so ever. Now there are a whole lot of people who will tell you that the important thing about resurrection is that you believe it. Those same folks absolutely love the story of doubting Thomas. And so every year on the second Sunday of Easter we read the story of doubting Thomas as a kind of inoculation against Thomas’ disease.

I sometimes think that the designers of the lectionary were trying to build up our resistance to doubt. Having problems believing in resurrection, well don’t do what Thomas did, don’t doubt, because you’ll be proven wrong. Jesus is alive, the wounds in his hands proved that to Doubting Thomas, so have no doubt about it the resurrection happened!  Believe in the resurrection!

The trouble with believing in stuff is that it belief can make absolutely no difference what so ever. I can believe in justice for all, but unless I’m prepared to seek justice, to be fair, or to resist injustice, it makes absolutely no difference what so ever. You can shout, “Christ is risen!” all you want but unless you are willing to live it, the resurrection means very little at all.

In order to live the resurrection you have to begin practicing resurrection. In order to practice something, you have to know what it looks like, what it sounds like, or what it feels like.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to show you what resurrection looks like in the flesh. Then I remembered a video that’s been doing the rounds on the internet, so I want you to watch this modern miracle of resurrection.

WATCH THE VIDEO CLIP FROM:  Alive Inside

Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed!  Alleluia!

            2000 years ago a bunch of rag-tag Jesus followers were huddled together in fear. Their beloved leader had been brutally executed by the powers that be and they were terrified that they would be next. Paralyzed by their fear, hiding behind a locked door, something happened that gave them the strength to burst forth from their own tomb and change the world.

Ever since they began to practice resurrection, people have been trying to figure out exactly what happened; what could have changed these bumbling, terrified, betrayers, abandoners, who seemed to be always getting things wrong, into a bunch of leaders who began a movement that spread through out the Empire within their own life-times and then based on the power of their witness, spread throughout the world and continues to nourish and sustain millions of people from generation to generation?

Now there are those that insist that it was the power of Jesus having been physically resuscitated from the dead that motivated his followers to change their lives and the lives of millions who have come after them.  But we live in the 21st century and we have access to all sorts of information that the generations who have gone before us did not. Most of us, myself included, are not swayed by arguments about a physical resuscitation of Jesus’ body. But I can tell you without a doubt that I do believe in resurrection and I know that Christ is risen and I also know that the same power that the early followers of Jesus used to change the world is available to you and to me.  And now more than ever the world needs us to start using that power. It’s long past time for us to start practicing resurrection.

So, if they weren’t talking about a physical resuscitation when they spoke of Jesus’ resurrection, what did the early followers of Jesus actually mean when they spoke of Jesus having been raised from the dead? During the first century many Jews had adopted a vision of the future that dealt with the prevailing question of the day:  “How could a just God allow his people to suffer endlessly at the hands of their enemies?” Or as Dom Crossan puts it:   When was God going to clean up the world so that justice could prevail?

An emotionally satisfying answer was found in a fantasy expressed in one of the visions attributed to the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones: “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.  They say, ‘Our bones re dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God:  I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.”

The idea that God would one day raise up the dead was not particularly popular with the priestly party in Jerusalem, perhaps because they had come to terms with the occupation forces of Rome, but it appealed strongly to some Pharisees who insisted that God would see to it that ultimately justice would prevail.

Biblical scholars suspect that Jesus and his followers shared the Pharisees’ hope for resurrection.  Each of the synoptic gospels tells a story about how members of the priestly, party known as the Sadducees, came to Jesus with a trick question that was intended to show the absurdity of the resurrection, but in each story Jesus cleverly avoids their trap.

That the editors of the first three gospels chose to include these stories, suggests that at least by the end of the first century resurrection imagery was important to the followers of Jesus. But exactly what they meant by resurrection is not clear. In the Christian writings, two Greek words are translated as “resurrection”. Each of these words evolved from a verb that translates into English as “raise”.

The first word, “anastasis” comes from the verb, which meant to stand up. The second word, ‘egersis” is from the verb that meant to wake up. When early Christian writers used these terms they may have been thinking like Pharisees and insisting that God would prove to be just.

Many New Testament scholars see the stories about the risen Christ as examples of hymns of praise or poetic expressions of the faithful whose lives had been transformed b their encounter with the Jesus story.

The apostle Paul never mentioned the empty tomb and his own description of his encounter with the risen Christ is one of a vision of Christ rather than an actual physical encounter. Paul uses the Greek verb for “appeared” when he describes both the apostles’ encounters and his own with the risen Christ.

But New Testament scholars can parse the words of the gospels forever and they are never going to be able to tell us exactly what the early followers of Jesus meant when they said that Jesus is risen.  What we can know about their understanding of resurrection can be found in the events that followed Jesus’ execution. Crucifixion was designed by the Romans to terrorize the nations they occupied. Corpses were left on display so that the people would understand that if they stepped out of line in any way, the horror or crucifixion was all they could hope for. The terrorizing of the population worked well for the Romans. For a while Jesus’ followers were terrified. But death could not contain the power of their experiences with Jesus. And it wasn’t long before they were living not as terrorized citizens of the Roman Empire, but as liberated followers of the way, banding together in communities of compassion, sharing their wealth, ensuring that none were needing among them.  Risking it all, for the sake of Jesus vision of God’s reign of justice and peace.

When I read the accounts of those early followers of the way who abandoned the tomb of the upper-room to gather together to build communities of compassion it is clear to me who was raised up by images of resurrection. The followers of Jesus were lifted up from a crouching or cowering position as they boldly proclaimed what they had learned from Jesus. The followers of Jesus stood up and got on with the business that was begun by Jesus. The followers of Jesus began to understand themselves in a whole new way.             The Apostle Paul wrote:  “We who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

By merging the pharisaic image of resurrection with the image of the body of Christ the first Christians could declare with confidence that Christ is risen. When followers of Jesus in the first century and in the twenty-first century talk about the resurrection of Christ we are proclaiming that death did not have the last word in the Jesus story because his followers were raised up to be his now body.

When we say that we believe in the resurrection of the dead, we are proclaiming that no matter how dead someone may appear to be, new life is always possible. Practicing resurrection begins when we huddle together refusing to let our fears entomb us. Practicing resurrection happens when we gather together to build communities of compassion.

Our friend in the video came to life not through any power of his own, but through the compassion of his caregivers who struggled to reach him. Caregivers are empowered to do their work by the gathered community. Resurrection is not a solitary endeavour.             Practicing resurrection requires that we gather together sharing our gifts, talents and treasure for the good of all. Practicing resurrection happens when we build communities of compassion that live fully, love extravagantly and empower people to be all that they were created to be.

Let it be so among us. Let us be a community of compassion. Let us always seek ways to empower our neighbours and ourselves to live fully, love extravagantly be all that we were created to be. Let us practice resurrection here and now!

THE RESURRECTION OF MARY – An Idle Tale

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St. Mary of Magdala the Apostle to the Apostles

As our Easter celebrations continue, the readings for this coming Sunday quickly move our attention to the story of Thomas.  Poor old doubting Thomas.  It’s the same every year.  Thomas’ doubts greet the faithful on “low Sunday”.  But before you let Thomas’ doubts capture Easter’s hope, consider exploring the resurrection of Mary.  Perhaps my not-so-long-ago encounter with a visiting New Testament scholar will entice you to follow Mary out of her tomb and beyond the streets to her place at the head of the fledgling community that became the church: 

He just said it for the third time! “Harlots!” He keeps calling them “harlots”, while I rack my brains to come up with one harlot. Then he points to the text and his charges become clearer, he says, “she is a “prostitute!”

My carefully reigned in anger is unleashed. “Where?  Where?  Where? Show me where it says this woman is a prostitute!”

As he refers to the Gospel text and insists that, “It is there, right there in the text”,

I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to wipe the bemused expression from his face. I want to rub his nose in the damned text. Instead, I begin the uneasy process of reigning in my anger. I slow my speech, I try to erase the tremor from my voice and I ask him to, “Show me, show me where it says this woman is a prostitute.”

He consults his text and says, “a woman in the city who was a sinner.”

“A sinner not a prostitute.”  I respond.

He insists, “Yes a prostitute.”

“Where?” I ask.

Again he insists, “A woman who was a sinner.”

I demanded to know, “Where does it say she was a prostitute?”

He insists, “The author means that she was a prostitute.”

I lose control, “How do you know?  What words does the author use to say that his woman was a prostitute? Show me in the text where it says she was a prostitute?”

He still doesn’t get it, “What do you mean? It is clear that this woman was a prostitute.”

Once again I push, “Show me.  Show me where?”

He continues to say, “She was a woman from the city who was a sinner.”

I know that the text says that, so I implore him to tell me, “The Greek… What does the Greek say?”

He replies, “amartolos”.

I push, “Does that mean prostitute?” We both know that it does not.

He replies, “Sinner. But the context clearly shows that she was a prostitute.”

Still pushing I ask him to “Show me.  Show me how the narrative says this woman was a prostitute. Show me where it says her sins were sexual.             Show me where it says so in the narrative.”

He says, “It’s clear.”

Clearly we disagree, so I try again, “Clear to you.  Show me. Show me!”

As he fumbles through the pages, I offer him a way out, “Okay.  Even if I concede the point that her sins were sexual, show me where it says that these sexual sins were nothing more than lust or adultery, show me where it says that she was a prostitute.  Show me!”

He couldn’t show me.  It’s simply not there.

Nowhere in the New Testament does it ever say in Greek or in English that Mary of Magdala is a prostitute.  But over and over again scholars, theologians, popes, preachers, and dramatists, have continued to cast Mary of Magdala as a prostitute.  

In the years that have transpired since than day in seminary, when a visiting New Testament scholar insisted that “the context clearly shows that she was a prostitute,” I’ve delighted in being able to participate in the phenomenon of Mary’s resurrection as the first Apostle.

I’ve gobbled up all the many books that have recently been written about the woman commonly known as Mary Magdalene. Some of them have been great scholarly texts like Jane Schaberg’s tome entitled “The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene.” While others have been little more than a salacious romp like Dan Brown’s:  The Davinci Code. But whether its scholarly speculation on the nature of Mary’s leadership in the Early Church or scandalous speculation on her sexual exploits with none other than Jesus himself, what these books hold in common is their ability to touch an insatiable curiosity about this enigmatic biblical character whose feminine attributes have ruffled the cassocks of those patriarchs of the priestly persuasion for centuries.

The recent resurrection of Mary has offered up portraits of a character whose historical roots go all the way back to a relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. And that relationship situates Mary at Jesus’ right hand. Now you’d think that someone whom all four gospels declare to be so very close to Jesus, ought to be someone your hear about in the church all the time.  You’d think that someone who the gospels record as having supported Jesus fledgling ministry out of her own resources, someone who if the gospels are to be believed, followed Jesus all the way to the cross and to whom the risen Christ first appeared and who is the first to be sent by Christ to proclaim the good news of the resurrection, you’d think that such a someone would be heralded down through the centuries, from pulpit to pulpit across the length and breadth of Christendom as the First Apostle. For indeed the literal definition of apostle is “one who is sent”. And if the gospels are to be believed,  Mary was sent by none other than the Risen Christ, so you’d think she would be honored by the very church that professes to follow Christ.  

But there’s just something about Mary….  that has made priests and preachers down through the centuries abhor her.  That the historical evidence clearly points to Mary’s role as a leader, perhaps the foremost leader of the first, fledgling followers of Jesus Christ, has not seemed to help Mary’s case. Indeed, it may be that her leadership position as the Apostle to the Apostles, the first witness to the resurrection and the first to proclaim that Christ is alive, is the very thing that set the proverbial cat among the priestly pigeons.

Now I know that there are those who would say that the swirling conspiracy theories that abound around any discussion of Mary are little more than the rumblings of ill-advised detractors who seek to undermine the teaching authority of the church.  But the evidence is clear that dear old Pope Gregory the Great, whether it was by accident or design actually misrepresented the Scriptures when he pontificated in a way that only popes can, about a woman’s sexuality. That this particular woman happened to be a close confidant of the one his holiness Pope Gregory called, “Lord and Saviour” did not save her from falling (pardon the pun) falling prey to his holiness’s foibles as he confused Mary Magdalene with the woman caught in adultery and made the perilously, presumptuous leap from adultery to prostitution.  And low and behold for 14 centuries after Gregory’s not so great condemnation, Mary has remained relegated to the ranks of those whose bodies are bought and sold for the sake of those who care little for the female gender. And despite biblical and historical evidence to the contrary, Mary has been denied the titles that befit her rank.

But if you want to believe that it is merely a coincidence that the denial of Mary’s rank coincides with the church’s adamant denial down through the centuries that women could ever hope to enter the ranks of the priesthood, well I’m sure that God will forgive you, I’m just not sure Mary or her sisters will.

So what do the scriptures tell us about the disciple whom Jesus loved?             Well for starters Mary was a woman whom Jesus healed.  The gospel according to Luke tells us that:

“With Jesus went the twelve, as well as some women he had healed of evil spirits and sickness;  Mary of Magdala, from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza; Suzanna; and many other women who were contributing to the support of Jesus and the Twelve with their own funds.”

Evil spirits and sickness; 7 demons, no mention of sex.  No mention of prostitution. Now I don’t know about you, but if a prostitute showed up at your church tongues would be wagging.  And whoever wrote the gospel of Luke was more than capable of passing on a sexual tidbit or two. In fact just before he tells us about the women who support Jesus’ ministry, the writers tells the tale of a woman caught in adultery. But the writer never mentions that Mary was a prostitute.

Now there are some who insist that Gregory the not so great was simply confused by this story and so we should understand that it was an easy mistake to make. But to accept this is to accept that adultery and prostitution are the same thing. Now I get that popes are not well versed in matters of sex, but sadly that’s never stopped them from pontificating.

What irks me more is that a 20th Century New Testament scholar, who ought to know better, could suggest that adultery and prostitution are the same thing or indeed that one woman is the same as the next.

Okay, I’ll admit that I have an ax to grind. Many women do. But can you blame us?

Gentlemen.  I know that I have the rare privilege of serving in ministry with the most enlightened generation of men any woman has had the privilege of serving. You guys are great! So, please don’t hear this as some sort of angry tirade against men. Because sadly, the attitudes that have confined Mary to walking the streets at night are not confined to men. The entire church culture is steeped in antiquated attitudes that will take all of us, women and men together, decades to recover from.

But recover we will.  We will recover the witness of St Mary of Magdala, whose dedicated faith in Jesus, helped her to follow Jesus, despite the fact that all of the Twelve Disciples abandoned him, Mary stayed and followed Jesus all the way to the foot of the cross and beyond. Even in her grief, while the disciples remained locked behind closed doors because they were afraid, Mary ventured out to perform with her ointments ready, not knowing how she would be able to roll the stone away, only knowing that they could not fail to do what she thought would be the last loving act for her beloved Jesus.

It is long past time for the church to celebrate the resurrection of Mary of Magdala, the Apostle to the Apostles. 

Mary faithfully ventured forth, not knowing how; only knowing that she must.  And it was Mary who recognized in the face of someone she thought was just a gardener; Mary recognized the face of Christ. In Mary Magdalene we see a woman whose love of Jesus pushed her to keep going in the face of torment and death. It was Mary’s love of Jesus that sent her into the garden alone. Even though she though that her beloved Jesus was dead and gone, her love helped push her forward and she discovered that everything old has been made new through love.

So, looking back to Mary, I wonder what it would take for us to proclaim, “I have seen Christ”?  Where can we find God in our lives and thereby find new life, new hope, new love?  Where can we find what Mary found; Mary who when she found this new thing, was able to go on to found a community of followers of Christ who endured despite the odds against them.  A community who although their writings were suppressed by the powers that be, they could not be kept silent. A community whose gospel lay buried for centuries, and whose restoration preserves the traditions if not the words of Mary who encourages us down through the centuries with these words:

“Do not weep and be distressed nor let your hearts be troubled. For Christ’s grace will be with you all and will shelter you. Rather we should praise Christ’s greatness, for Christ has joined us together and made us true human beings.”(Gospel of Mary and no I won’t supply the exact reference, in the hope that you might just read the entire Gospel)

Mary saw the risen Christ in the face of a gardener. Were can we find the face of Christ? Can we begin to see the face of Christ in the human beings that surround us?  Perhaps when we begin to share Mary’s faith that the risen Christ can bee seen, we will begin to see the ace of Christ in those around us; in face of the stranger we meet on the road, in the face of the homeless man as we sit and share a meal with them, in the face of a child we reach out to lift up out of poverty, in face the woman upon whose shoulders we stand, in the face of our opponent as together we struggle for understanding, in the face of our enemy as we work for peace, in the face of our tormentors as we strive for justice, in the face of the sick as we seek healing, and in the face of the poor as we offer aid.

When we can look into the face of those we meet and see the face of Christ then perhaps we can follow in the footsteps of Mary and all the world will know by our love, that we too follow Christ.

St. Mary of Magdala, the first Apostle, the Apostle to the Apostle, the one in whom the Risen Christ entrusted the good news of eternal life.

May the power of Mary’s witness inspire you to see the face of Christ in the world.

EASTER – THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD

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WELCOME TO YOUR VERY OWN RESURRECTION!

Listen to the sermon here

GOOD FRIDAY – Jesus did not die for your sin!

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Good Friday Lament

Good Friday 2012 Sermon audio – here

Good Friday Worship bulletin – download here – to be printed double sided

MAUNDY THURSDAY – A STRANGE NIGHT

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      This evening we will gather together to remember what we have been told about the night before Jesus died.  In our community we will begin with a ritualized washing of hands, then dine over a simple meal of soup, wine and bread.  Over the meal we will talk together about the events of Jesus’ life, paying special attention to what we have been told about the Last Supper and Jesus’ betrayal.  As the meal and the conversation comes to a close, we will take bread, give thanks bless it and give it to one another saying, “The bread of Christ given for you.”  Then we will take a glass of wine give thanks and pass it to one another saying, “Christ poured out for you.”   Then we will strip our sanctuary in preparation for what tomorrow brings.

         In this post I have included a copy of the worship bulletin that will guide us. It can be downloaded here. to be printed double-sided

         21st century minds often find it difficult to reconcile the gospel accounts of this evening with.  So, in place of the homily, we will discuss our struggles to understand the events of this evening in light of all that we have learned together.  

         For those of you who have asked, a copy of a previous Maundy Thursday homily is included here.  This homily was preached in 2007 and while I am tempted to make some changes to it in light my own struggles to come to terms with the gospel accounts, I offer it unaltered, trusting that others may see in it the early stirrings of my own desire to discover a more progressive Christianity.  At the time I had just completed reading Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s “The Last Week” and John Shelby Spong’s “Jesus for the Non-Religious” and their work permeates the homily.

 Maundy Thursday 2007:

          It’s a strange night.

            For several decades after the Resurrection, Jesus’ followers were known as the People of the Way, or the Followers of the Way. Almost 2000 years separate the first followers of Jesus from 21st century Christians.

            I wonder if the early People of the Way would have as much difficulty recognizing modern Christians as Jesus’ followers as we modern Christians have understanding the practices of the People of the Way.

            The People of the Way understood Jesus to be the embodiment of what can be seen of God. Jesus shows us who God is and Jesus shared with his followers his vision of God’s justice.

            The experience of Jesus followers is ongoing. But we 21st century Christians know Jesus through the writings of the People of the Way. The New Testament represents a picture of a developing tradition that speaks with two voices:  the voice of Jesus and the voice of the developing Christian community.

            Like the People of the Way, Jesus is for us 21st century Christians, the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like. Jesus is radically centered in God and filled with the Spirit, Jesus is the decisive disclosure of what can be seen of God embodied in a human life.  Jesus life incarnates the character of God. And so for us the details of that life take are important as we try to understand what can be known of God from those details.           

            So, tonight we gather to remember the night in which Jesus was betrayed. It’s a strange night. There’s so much to think about. And there are so many questions. There are a lot of strange customs that are sometimes difficult to understand. There’s a strange and yet familiar meal. There’s the washing of feet. There’s the new commandment. There’s the matter of the betrayal. And there’s the sacrifice that we know is coming.           

            Let’s begin with the strange and yet familiar meal, which is the Last Supper and also the beginning of a new kind of supper.

            Most of us are so familiar with the words of institution:

            “On the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus had supper with his friends and at that meal Jesus took bread gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his followers saying take and eat this is my body, given for you do this for the remembrance of me.

            And when the supper was over, Jesus took a cup of wine, gave thanks, and gave it to them saying, “Drink this all of you this cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.  Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.”

            Week after week, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, millennium after millennium, followers of Jesus’ both ancient and modern have gathered around the table to proclaim Christ’s death until Christ comes again. Sometimes the meal has transforming power, nourishing power, restorative, profound power. At other times the meal is just one more religious ritual carried out by rote, experienced without feeling, or impact. And sometimes the meal seems foreign to us, almost alien, perhaps even barbaric.

            To peer back through the centuries that divide us from the meal itself is no easy task. We may have a faint understanding of the meal as some sort of reenactment of the Passover, when a blood sacrifice was used to ensure that God would pass over the first born of the chosen people. But what does that have to do with us? Surely we don’t need a blood sacrifice to save us from the power of God?

            Most 21st century dwellers have long since forgotten the Passover, and those who do remember have lost their appetite for a blood sacrifice. Unlike the vast majority of the Followers of the Way, we did not grow up in close contact with animals; our meat comes plastic-wrapped and there’s no need to even think about the fact that our life is sustained by the death of animals. So, simply describing Jesus as the Passover Lamb whose blood sets us free to be people of God, will not suffice. Besides, we 21st century Christians have a dismissal view of scapegoating. So, to simply describe Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, leaves a bad taste in our mouths as we try to understand the character of a God who would require a scapegoat to atone for our sin.

            The  Jewish festivals of  Passover and Atonement  may have provided useful images to explain the horrendous events of this Holy Week to the Followers of the Way, who would have been familiar with the ancient traditions of sacrifice. But such images leave we 21st century Christians with a picture of a cruel, judgmental bloodthirsty God. So, we have to peer beyond Passover lambs and scapegoats if we are to understand God’s grace. 

            Long before animal sacrifice was invented, human beings knew two rather basic ways of creating, maintaining, or restoring good relations with one another—the gift and the meal. The proffered gift and the shared meal are probably the most ancient forms of human interaction. To the ancients, it seemed only natural to create, maintain, or restore good relations with the divine by offering a gift or sharing a meal. And what better gift for an ancient than to sacrifice the most precious of possessions, the very best of the livestock.

            Indeed one of the meanings of the word sacrifice is gift. But, we’ve long since forgotten the meaning of the word sacrifice.  sacrum facere means little to us.

            The Latin is largely lost to us.  sacrum ……..Holy;              facere … to make; sacrum facere ….to make holy.

            That the ancients revered the life giving deaths of animals and sought to make those deaths holy by pouring the animal’s blood on the altar of God is a ritual that escapes us. To us sacrifice has become synonymous with suffering and substitution. And so we fail to understand that ancient offerers  never dreamed that the point of sacrifice was to make the animal suffer. To sacrifice an animal was simply to emphasize one’s reverence for the gift; to sacrifice to make holy. 

            “Take and eat, this is my body given for you.” …“My blood poured out for you.”

            At that strange and yet oh so familiar meal all those years ago, Jesus invited his followers to see the meal itself as a sacrifice in the true sense of the word. Jesus comes as pure gift. The gift of Jesus is made holy, sacrum facerum in the sharing. Jesus invites his followers to participate fully with him in what is about to transpire. And, Yes, the language of body and blood points to a violent death.

            When a person dies nonviolently we speak of a separation of body and soul. But when a person dies violently we speak of a separation of body and blood. It would never have been possible for the Followers of the Way to speak of Jesus’ death as a blood sacrifice unless, first, it had been a violent execution. And as a blood sacrifice, the point is neither suffering nor substitution, but participation with Christ in the sacrifice.

Jesus gathers with his followers, the ones he’s been teaching for a long time. Although Jesus is their teacher, he humbles himself and performs the actions of a servant and washes his followers feet. Then Jesus and his followers sit down to eat the Passover meal, a meal that signifies an earlier attempt of God’s to free God’s chosen ones from the cycle of violence. And at the Passover meal Jesus makes it clear that one of his beloved disciples will betray him.

            Jesus knows exactly what will happen when he is handed over to the authorities, because his own cousin John the Baptist was handed over and within days John’s head was served up on a silver platter. We can only imagine the scene at Herod’s feast when John’s head arrived dripping with blood.  It’s as if Jesus says to his disciples, “Enough already, I know I’m about to be handed over, so here take this bread; let this bread be my body, let this bread satisfy your hunger for violence; and this wine let this wine be my blood, drink this wine, let this sacrifice be an end to it.”

            “Whenever you remember me, eat this bread and drink this wine, sacrifice no more bodies, spill no more blood.” It’s as if God uses our violence to save us.

            Whenever we eat the bread or drink the wine we do so in remembrance of Jesus’ willingness to live fully in our world and to offer himself up to violence in order to put an end to violence. Jesus’ love is so strong that Jesus is willing to submit to violence in order that his followers might see once and for all that violence is not the answer.  For in the face of violence Jesus refuses to employ violence but instead insists that God forgive us. We eat the bread and drink the wine to remember Christ’s willingness to sacrifice himself so that no more blood would be spilt and no more bodies destroyed for the sake of sin.

            I know that there are a lot of Christians who are content to say that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins; but this is the 21st century and I don’t know about you but I’m not willing to worship a God that demands the death of his beloved son to pay for my guilt. Violence is our disease. We are the ones caught up in an endless cycle of violence. God is LOVE. Jesus embodied that love.

            On the night that Jesus was betrayed, Jesus confronted the evil that constrains us from being the loving creatures that we were created to be. And so we cannot do justice to Jesus’ new commandment that we love one another unless we are prepared to confront the demons that lurk within. And so as we eat this bread and drink this wine we do so, confident of Christ’s promise that God is gracious and violence will not win.

            On this night so long ago, Jesus took the violence of blood sacrifice and substituted bread and wine and bid us to remember. As we eat the bread and drink the wine, we like those gathered long ago share with Christ.

One with Christ we too are made holy, we too are sacrifice; and in Christ, we too shall die and rise again.

Jesus takes the sacrifice of his body and blood and turns it into the bread and wine that hold’s the promise that unites Christians everywhere in the hope of the resurrection to come and God’s promise of eternal life. 

This is the Good News!

The Good News of God’s grace!

I PLEAD GUILTY TO THE CHARGE of` DENYING THE RESURRECTION

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BUT I AINT LEAVING!!!

             Blogging is new to me and I must say that I am overwhelmed by the responses to yesterday’s post about resurrection.  While many have emailed or posted their ardent “amens” others have been scathing and some hostile to my remarks.  I am grateful to everyone who has responded.  All of your comments help me as I continue to ponder the theological and practical implications of the Easter story.  For those of you who have suggested that I have no business calling myself a Christian or a pastor and have suggested that I ought to consider leaving the church, I offer the following.

            Last year, I got together with clergy colleagues to talk about the challenges of preaching during Holy Week. When the subject of the crucifixion and the resurrection came up, the conversation became very lively as the traditionalists challenged the progressives. Toward the end of our conversation, it became clear that because I was unwilling to concede to the notion that Jesus corpse was physically resuscitated; I stood accused of having denied the resurrection.

            Some colleagues rose to my defense and insisted that I wasn’t saying anything different than what we all learned in seminary. But they also insisted that most lay-people simply don’t want to hear it. So, I asked them if they were going to preach about what they had learned in seminary and beyond and the general consensus was that there are too many guests on Easter Sunday to tackle theology.

            Some said, they were simply too afraid of the fundamentalists in their congregations to ever even attempt to preach what they knew. A few confessed that they were working up to it; but not on Easter Sunday.

            The traditionalists in the group were disgusted. One colleague went so far as to insist that I had no business being in the church because my very presence puts the beliefs of the faithful at risk. He wondered aloud, “Why do you stay in the church if you don’t believe?   If the church’s theology no longer works for you, why don’t you just leave?”

            “Why do you stay?” is a question I am all too familiar with.

            Well, before I can answer that, I have to say, that I’ve taken a leaf out of Joan Chittister’s book. Chittister insists that we should all be asking ourselves why we stay.  She cautions that those of us who stay, need to respect those who decide to leave and those who leave must respect those who stay. Chittister also insists that while we continue to ask ourselves why we stay, we ought to remember that “if we go, we must not go quietly and if we stay we must not stay quietly”. We must speak out because the church needs us to speak out.

            I confess that I am constantly asking myself why I stay and there are days when I feel like leaving, days when I feel like staying quietly, and days when I am convinced that it is in the church where I must not only stay but echo the words of Luther with gusto:  for in here I stand!

            I stay, because I still believe that it is possible to change the church from within. I stay, despite the fact that each time I go out into the wider church, the traditions and traditionalists that I meet there often make me want to leave. But then I remember all of the people in the faithful community that I serve. I remember their wiliness to dwell in the questions of our faith. I remember their courage and their determination. I remember their thirst for knowledge. I remember the amazing ways they reach out to the people outside the walls of the church. I remember their faithfulness, their love,  and their keen sense of justice. I remember the image of Christ that I see in their faces and I know without a doubt that the church is where I belong, even though I know that as a community we will continue to ask ourselves,  “Why do we stay?”  And I know that if we stay we will not stay quietly. And if we should ever decide to leave, we will not leave quietly. I stay because in the church community that I serve, I have encountered the Body of Christ.

            Here in the church, I have seen the risen Christ reach out to our neighbours in need, fight for justice, and love God with all our hearts, with all our souls and yes with all our minds.  So, I stay surrounded by such a great crowd of witnesses.  But like so many before us, we must not stay quietly. Together we must continue to speak out for change in our church.  And together we must continue to explore what the best minds of this century have to teach us about the nature of our God.

            My desire to work together with others to move the church into the 21st century is precisely why I preach the sermons I preach on Good Friday and Easter Sunday mornings.  And for the most part, despite the dire warnings of some of my clergy colleagues, our visitors take it all very well. Indeed many are relieved to hear that there is more than one way to follow Christ.  But there was this one person last Easter Sunday, who on the way out the door, insisted that I had denied the resurrection.  This person was quite distressed and wondered aloud how a Christian could deny the resurrection and still call themselves a Christian.

            Now even though I assured this person that I do indeed believe in the resurrection, it was clear to me, what this person heard me say was not exactly the same as what I actually said.  So, let me make it clear. There is, and there has always been, from the very beginning disagreement among the followers of Christ as to the exact nature of the resurrection. And things aren’t any different today than they were in the first century. There is a distinct disagreement between the Christianity of biblical scholarship and the Christianity of fundamentalists.  And 21st century Christians can be found faithfully following Christ all along the spectrum of beliefs about the resurrection.

            Fundamentalists are quite sure of their truth.  On Easter the crucified Jesus, who was laid in the grave as a deceased man on Good Friday, was by the mighty act of God, restored to life on Easter. Jesus had broken the power of death for all people. If the body of Jesus was not physically restored to life, the fundamentalists claim, then Easter is fraudulent. There can be no compromise here. Those who waver on this foundational truth of Christianity have, according to this perspective, abandoned the essential core of their faith tradition.

            Well, to borrow the words from an old song and say, “”Tain’t necessarily so!” When you read the New Testament in the order in which these books were written, a fascinating progression is revealed.  Paul, for example, writing between the years 50 and 64 or some 20 to 34 years after the earthly life of Jesus came to an end, never describes the resurrection of Jesus as a physical body resuscitated after death.  There is no hint in the Pauline corpus that one, who had died, later walked out of his grave clothes, emerged from the tomb and was seen by his disciples.

            What Paul does suggest is that Easter meant that God had acted to reverse the verdict that the world had pronounced on Jesus by raising Jesus from death into God. It was, therefore, out of God in a transforming kind of heavenly vision that this Jesus then appeared to certain chosen witnesses. Paul enumerates these witnesses and, in a telling detail, says that this was the same Jesus that Paul himself had seen. No one suggests that Paul ever saw a resuscitated body.

            The Pauline corpus later says, “If you then have been raised with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” Remember, the story of the Ascension had not been written when these Pauline words were formed. Paul did not envision the Resurrection as Jesus being restored to life in this world but as Jesus being raised into God. It was not an event in time but a transcendent and transforming truth.

            Paul died, according to our best estimates, around the year 64 C.E. The first Gospel was not written until the early 70’s. Paul never had a chance to read the Easter story in any Gospel. The tragedy of later Christian history is that we read Paul through the lens of the Gospels.  So, we have both distorted Paul and also confused theology.

            When Mark, the first Gospel, was written the Risen Christ never appears. The last time Jesus is seen comes when his deceased body is taken from the cross and laid in the tomb. Mark’s account of the Resurrection presents us with the narrative of mourning women confronting an empty tomb, meeting a messenger who tells them that Jesus has been raised and asking these women to convey to the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. Mark then concludes his Gospel with a picture of these women fleeing in fear, saying nothing to anyone.  So abrupt was this ending that people began to write new endings to what they thought was Mark’s incomplete story. Two of those endings are actually reproduced in the King James Version of the Bible as verses 9-20. But thankfully, these later creations have been removed from the text of Mark in recent Bibles and placed into footnotes.  The sure fact of New Testament scholarship is that Mark’s Gospel ended without the Risen Christ ever being seen by anyone.

            Both Matthew, who wrote between 80-85, and Luke, who wrote between 88-92, had Mark to guide their compositions. Both changed, heightened and expanded Mark. It is fascinating to lift those changes into consciousness and to ask what was it that motivated Matthew and Luke to transform Mark’s narrative. Did they have new sources of information? Had the story grown over the years in the retelling?

            The first thing to note is that Matthew changes Mark’s story about the women at the tomb. First, the messenger in Mark becomes a supernatural angel in Matthew’s story. Next Matthew says the women do see Jesus in the garden.             They grasp him by the feet and worship him. This is the first time in Christian history that the Resurrection is presented as physical resuscitation. It occurs in the 9th decade of the first century.  It should be noted that it took more than 50 years to begin to interpret the Easter experience as the resuscitated body of the deceased Jesus.

            I don’t have time to go into the details of the development of this interpretation. But you can trace its growth through the gospels of Matthew and Luke until finally at the end of the first century to the Gospel of John. And when you read these chronologically, you will see that the Easter story appears to have grown rather dramatically over the years.

            Something happened after the crucifixion of Jesus that convinced the disciples that Jesus shared in the eternal life of God and was thus available to them as a living presence.   This experience was so profound that the disciples, who at his arrest had fled in fear, were now reconstituted and empowered even to die for the truth of their vision.  This experience had the power to force the Jewish disciples to redefine the God of the Jews so that Jesus could be seen as part of who God is. Finally this experience was so profound that it ultimately created, on the first day of the week, a new holy day that was quite different from the Sabbath, to enable Christians to mark this transforming moment with a liturgical act called “the breaking of bread.”

            When these biblical data are assembled and examined closely, two things become clear. First something of enormous power gripped the disciples following the crucifixion that transformed their lives. Second, it was some fifty years before that transforming experience was interpreted as the resuscitation of a three days dead Jesus to the life of the world. Our conversation about the meaning of Easter must begin where these two realities meet.

            As for those who condemn those of us who choose to follow the biblical strains of our resurrection theology as non-Christians, well there will always be those who will insist that it is their way or the highway.  As for the person who greeted me on the way out the door last Easter Sunday and questioned my ability to call myself a Christian, I would say, “Thank-you!”.  This question allowed me the opportunity to communicate clearly and concisely my thoughts on the resurrection, so please allow me to repeat myself. To those who have responded to my blogs, I say, “Thank-you!”  I thank-you for engaging me in the questions of our faith.  I thank-you because your questions make me a better follower and I trust that my questions will do the same for you.  Let us together be the church in our own time and place and have the courage to follow where-ever Christ leads.

            So, without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think.  I deny the resurrection of Christ.  Theologian Peter Rollins puts it far better than I ever could, and with him, let me just say:

             “I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor;  I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and the oppressed.

            Every time I do not serve my neighbour, every time I walk away from the poor.

            I deny the resurrection every time I participate in an unjust system.

            However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are.

            I affirm the resurrection when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees,

            I affirm the resurrection when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out,

            I affirm the resurrection, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed.

            I affirm the resurrection each and every time I look into your eyes and see the face of Christ.”

             Christ has died. Christ has risen.  Christ will come again and again.

            This is the mystery of our faith.

            Christ is Risen!

            Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

            Christ is risen in you and in me. 

            In the words of Martin Luther:

            “This is most certainly true!”

            Can I get an Amen?